Page 2070 - Week 06 - Thursday, 7 May 2009
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colour printing. There is a practical recommendation about the size of mailboxes for members and staff. I think we all suffer from the problem, and it is important when increasingly everything arrives electronically that we have the tools to do the job. There are also some suggestions about staffing and preparation of a strategy. There is a recommendation about having one email address for Hansard, which I think might already have been addressed, so well done if that is the case.
I refer in particular to recommendation 20. When we were discussing what was happening at the Hume Resource Recovery Estate enterprise, we were told by the Chief Minister’s project facilitation unit that all that they look at is the financial bottom line and that, if it does not stack up, it does not get the go-ahead. This gets back to the earlier recommendations about ESD. There is more to it than just the sheer dollars. Indeed, if we are all serious about reducing the carbon footprint of the ACT then we have to look at ways of reducing it and we also have to look at different ways of accounting for what we are doing. The recommendation talks about the triple bottom line to the territory as a whole. Yes, we have to look at the commercial viability of organisations, but if a project is not viable in a commercial sense or in a value for dollar sense, the inclusion of social and ecological sustainability may be a deciding factor regarding what projects the project facilitation unit will support.
I think it is very important. Often, when you are leading, these things initially are not cost effective. You can see it simply in the evolution of solar power. Solar power, 20 or 30 years ago, was not commercially viable. A lot of effort went into wind because wind seemed to be the front runner, but solar is catching up. So you have got to look at the long term and you have got to look at the triple bottom line and make sure that you are making a balanced decision that gives you a long-term outcome, not an outcome just for today.
Recommendation 21 talks about the centenary celebrations and recommends that the government ensures that community consultation informs the creation of an enduring legacy. There were concerns that there may be no long-term enduring legacy that celebrates the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the city that we all call home. Indeed, the fact is that the community should have a say in it.
Recommendation 22 goes back to the whole issue of ecologically sustainable development. We suggest that Australian Capital Tourism investigates the feasibility of carbon foot printing events such as Floriade. It has been said in this place many times over many years that the Folk Festival is one of those events that does a fantastic job of reducing its impact on the environment. It has turned full circle in many ways. One of the perfect examples is that you now buy a mug of coffee; you do not get a styrofoam cup. There is no styrofoam, and that is a good thing. But as it leaves EPIC, we have to make sure that waste is disposed of appropriately. There were some concerns that it may not have been done in that way.
Tourism came up in the report—something dear to my heart. Recommendation 23 laments the fact that, now that tourism has been dragged into Territory and Municipal Services, the tourism report that ACTC and Canberra Tourism Events Corporation used to produce, which would run to 70, 80 or 100 pages, and told us exactly what was going on in tourism in this city—it is a billion-dollar industry and a very
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