Page 1504 - Week 04 - Thursday, 25 March 2010
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The committee, in going through all the various reports from the various entities which report to us—and I can say it myself, as a member of another committee—found it very hard to interpret the ESD data for quite a number of reasons. Firstly, it would be really nice if we had at least a couple of years of comparative data. When you see a figure for one year, you do not know whether we have got better or whether we have got worse. You do not know whether it is a great result or whether it is a dreadful result. The absence of comparative data makes it very hard to understand what is going on. That comparative data should all be there. We are not asking for more work to be done. We are just asking for an extra column to be put in the annual reports.
The committee notes that there will be a revision of the Chief Minister’s annual reports directions, we believe, this year. Recommendation 6 specifies a requirement that all reporting entities provide comparative ecologically sustainable development data. We note that work has already been done by CMD on this and we would like to see it being made part of the directions. The next direction, again, talks about tabular formats for the comparative data.
The committee asks for a thorough audit of waste. We made this a recommendation following a question I asked a number of the agencies. It was quite interesting to listen to the results. Some of the agencies had an idea what was happening with their waste. One of them had employed some students from the University of Canberra to audit all their waste. I thought that was quite commendable. Yet the Department of Treasury said they had had an extensive audit of their waste which revealed that about 80 per cent of it could have been recycled. However, vastly less than that was recycled.
The committee commends this department’s thorough auditing of waste approach to all entities. That was our recommendation 8. We would like to see that annual reports next year report on this and also propose initiatives to address the issues which these audits will inevitably bring up. One of the issues was that in relation to secure paper waste, while it can be and is recycled, it takes a lot more effort to recycle it. The learning from that is: if paper waste does not have to be put in the secure bin and can just be put in the normal recycling bin, please do that for the sake of the environment. It costs less and it leads to a better result.
We also talked about better housekeeping within the government and asked questions about building temperatures. Recommendation 13 recommends that reporting entities take active measures within their accommodation settings to identify a balance between employee comfort and energy savings. We then revisited the perennial issue of transparency of executive remuneration. We have been through this, I think, in questions without notice and at previous annual reports hearings. This is something which the government should clear up. We talked briefly about supermarkets and the need to ensure maximum competition and opportunity.
The next major item that we talked about was EPIC. We had a number of recommendations related to that which I suspect Mr Smyth will talk about in more detail than I will. I will leave those for him. Another item which has been a perennial
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