Page 2115 - Week 06 - Thursday, 7 May 2009
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perhaps maintenance skills. But we also know there are many in the community who want to do the right thing but are simply time poor, who have other stresses in their lives, or who just do not have the necessary skills to change a showerhead or something. These are the people we really need to reach out to.
As Ms Hunter has already noted, with the switch your thinking program, it is important that it is about not just switching our thinking, but also about switching action. The one-stop shop, an on-line portal for people to access information and education about efficiency, is a great start, as is the idea to coordinate the booking of people’s home audit and guide them through the maze of government rebates and incentives that are available. But this program must also have the capacity to coordinate the delivery of services such as the arrival of a plumber at your house to actually install the water-saving device and sort out the leaky taps. That is the sort of program that will make a real difference.
Importantly, particularly given the amount of public funding allocated, the government will need to set targets for the effectiveness of this program. For example, how many houses can we retrofit with water-saving devices? How many houses can we move up to at least a three-star rating for energy efficiency? This is the kind of cold, hard data that we will be looking for as a measure of the success of this program. We should tailor programs to suit our community and consider means testing particular initiatives. We must specifically target the poorest in our community who we know are often most disadvantaged by higher energy and water consumption and therefore have proportionately higher bills. Implementing efficiency measures is of the utmost importance to this group, as they have the potential to deliver ongoing savings as well as improved quality of life.
Preserving our natural environment also has costs associated with it. The expertise required for our parks management has been brought to the forefront recently with the release of the environment commissioner’s report into grassland management, which highlighted that many grasslands across the ACT do not have suitable management plans in place, nor necessarily the resources to effectively implement those plans. The Greens welcome the funding in this budget for the implementation of the kangaroo management plan. As we have repeatedly stated, the sensible management of kangaroos in the ACT requires long-term thinking and planning, particularly to avoid the anguish of an annual kangaroo cull.
However, I do remain a little perplexed that there is only one year of funding for weed and rabbit management. I am not sure if this reflects an exceedingly optimistic outlook from the minister about the eradication of weeds and rabbits or if further funding for these programs will follow in next year’s budget. I hope it is the latter, as I am quite sure we will not have resolved either of these problems in the next 12 months.
More generally, the Greens look forward to exploring with the government in more detail during the estimates process the current state of funding for reserve management, grasslands and woodlands and our national parks, as well as how the government anticipates building the network of grassland reserves, as flagged in their 2004 election commitment.
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