Page 1234 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 24 March 2009
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the best value for money. The reality is that this government is an efficient government and it is investing in Canberra’s future.
MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (4.16): Like all members of the Assembly, I want to reduce wasteful expenditure in the ACT government. What I and the Greens would like to see is sustainable expenditure which addresses triple bottom-line issues. I am glad to hear the support of the opposition for this. I would like to talk about some areas of expenditure. Ms Hunter has already spoken on some areas which the Greens would regard as non-wasteful expenditure. I will start off by referring to cycleways. Mrs Dunne mentioned cycleways as an example of wasteful expenditure.
Mrs Dunne: No. I am sure the word “cycleway” did not actually—
MS LE COUTEUR: I am afraid that is what I heard, but I am very glad to hear that the opposition does not regard cycleways as—
Mr Smyth: We had a better cycleways policy. It was in our policy.
MS LE COUTEUR: Great.
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Ms Le Couteur, address your comments through me.
MS LE COUTEUR: Thank you, Madam Deputy Chair; I will continue. The issue I would like to talk about next is energy use. As members may remember from my maiden speech, in my previous job I was an IT manager, so I will start speaking about green IT as an example that I know something about.
The ACT government could use thin client machines rather than PCs. Thin client machines are machines that have just enough intelligence on them to run what is needed. You are probably all familiar with them in effect: if you log on from home using a Citrix terminal facility, which I imagine most of us do, you are effectively having a thin client computing experience. Thin client machines cost a lot less money to buy than a full PC and they use a lot less energy. They use about 10 watts versus about 70 watts. They also save considerable money on maintenance, because there is basically no intelligence down at the client end. If any problems occur, you just put a new image on the computer and you do not require the Richards or Deans of this world to come and fix it for you.
Getting a little bit more technical in the computing line, one of the things the ACT government also could do more of is what is called virtualising servers. Instead of having separate physical computer boxes for each application, as it were—each server—modern technology allows you to have multiple servers in one physical server. It is called virtualised machines. This is an area where I believe the ACT government has made small steps, but not yet big steps. Again, this is an area where you save money and you save electricity—and you save greenhouse gases because you are saving the electricity.
Another IT example is in printing. It would be very easy to set all the printers in the ACT government to print double sided by default.
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