Page 3249 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 17 September 2013
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MR CORBELL: Those figures are previously on the public record. I do not have them immediately to hand but I am happy to make them available to the member.
MADAM SPEAKER: A supplementary question, Mr Wall.
MR WALL: Minister, given that the additional liquor licensing fees were to fund additional police operations, will the liquor licence fees now be refunded to publicans?
MR CORBELL: No, because we still have additional police doing liquor licensing enforcement, and there is no getting away from that assertion. These are police funded, in part, through the increased liquor licensing arrangements to ensure that the community sees a further reduction in alcohol-related crime and violence.
That has been the overwhelming result of this government’s liquor licensing reforms. We have seen a drop in the number of criminal incidents related with alcohol. That has been confirmed by the hospitality industry. They themselves are seeing those results and they welcome them. We expect, and the government expects, those results to continue. There is no reduction in police. There is no reduction in the focus provided to alcohol-crime targeting. There is no certainly no argument around the fees.
MADAM SPEAKER: A supplementary question, Mr Wall.
MR WALL: Minister, why have you failed to follow up on your commitments on inspections and enforcement of responsible service of alcohol?
MR CORBELL: I do not know how that is relevant to the earlier question, but I have not.
Environment—carbon pricing
MR COE: My question is to the Minister for Environment and Sustainable Development. The federal coalition government that was recently elected has pledged to abolish Labor’s carbon tax. Has the carbon tax been beneficial for Canberrans and if so, how?
MR CORBELL: Madam Speaker, I am happy to make some general comments about the value of putting a price on carbon but I would note that these are not matters that are directly within my responsibility as minister for the environment, given that we do not have a carbon pricing scheme administered by the ACT government. But since I have been invited, I am happy to make some general observations.
Of course, putting a price on carbon is universally recognised as the most economically efficient way of ensuring that industry and the economy respond to what is otherwise an externality that is not appropriately priced. Of course, what we have from the incoming federal government is a policy that junks what is universally recognised as the most cost-efficient way of reducing the cost of greenhouse gas emissions and at the same time a policy called “direct action”, which is now
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