Page 2911 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 29 June 2011
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is nevertheless something that should be explored if for no other reason than to assist in the evaluation of the owning versus leasing question.
One other point that should probably be made is that we do not have an office accommodation strategy. Of course, that may well be the government office building, but we know that there are other operational requirements, such as the Gungahlin proposal. It would be beneficial to consider the broader objectives and requirements together and see how this impacts upon the single building model.
As I said, this is an issue that will not go away and is not a simple “do or don’t” question. There will always be direct costs incurred if we do not act. This year $500,000 is being appropriated for the office building. The Greens agree that further research and evaluation are required, and therefore we will agree to the appropriation of this money. We do have some concern about the government’s willingness to consider other options, but we trust that we can work constructively on the best way forward for the ACT public service. We make it very plain that we will not necessarily agree to future appropriations for the project if we cannot resolve the issues that I have outlined.
The second topic I would like to address is the clean economy strategy—which, to the rest of world, is known as the green economy, as evidenced by the United Nations green economy initiative. I draw all members’ attention to the range of reports that are published and the scope of options they canvass. It appears that we will have a clean economy strategy, which would be better than nothing, which is the current situation. I would like to make the point that there is no alternative to this; we do actually have to shift our economy to support low-emission industries to ensure the long-term prosperity of Canberra residents. There is no reason why we cannot embark on this task now. There are many examples where subnation jurisdictions have forged ahead with positive initiatives in spite of reluctance by their national governments to properly address the issue.
Tomorrow—hopefully; we were supposed to be doing it today—we will be debating amendments to the feed-in-tariff, which has proven to be a very effective mechanism that has created jobs and helped what was an emerging industry thrive. To shut it down and perpetuate the rise and fall of renewable energy because of fluctuating government policies would be a great shame. There are many other options and a range of industries that can deliver low-emission jobs and help ensure that the Canberra community will rise to the challenge and ensure that ultimately we are in a better position to respond to the climate change challenge and deliver lasting prosperity for Canberrans.
I would make the point that a couple of stand-alone initiatives are not going to do it. We need a coordinated response that considers everything from the next iteration of weathering the change to the waste strategy; procurement policy; government office accommodation, whatever it ends up looking like; things like the levers we created in the lease variation charge bill debate last week; and other taxes more broadly. We need to consider everything we do. The strategy should be a holistic attempt to coordinate all the government levers so that we transition as quickly and as smoothly as we possibly can.
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