Page 3732 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 23 October 2013
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We continue, too, to focus on the issue of drink-driving. Drink-driving remains a concern in relation to driving behaviour in our city. The government has allocated just over $5 million over the next four years to put in place the alcohol interlocks initiative. That bill was passed in June this year and will commence in June next year. The new legislation provides for high-risk drink-drivers who wish to return to driving to be subject to an interlock condition on their probationary licence requiring them to demonstrate an alcohol-free breath test before they can start the ignition of their vehicle. This initiative is, again, an election commitment made by Labor and delivered—delivered to improve the road safety circumstances of our city and to make sure that recidivist drink-drivers get a clean driving history re-established and are not presenting a danger to other drivers on our roads.
Turning to my other portfolio, the Environment and Sustainable Development Directorate, there are a couple of items to quickly note. Firstly, the energy efficiency improvement scheme commenced in January this year. This scheme is reaching out to approximately 70,000 Canberra households, with free or subsidised services to assist them with managing their energy costs and reducing their electricity bills. We know that this scheme will contribute greenhouse gas reduction savings of approximately 700,000 tonnes over the three years of the scheme and will on average save households around $300 a year over the course of the scheme. This is an important reform that saves households money and drives down our greenhouse gas emissions. It is important to meet our greenhouse gas reduction targets and to help Canberrans with ongoing concerns about utility costs.
The government has also completed its large-scale solar auction initiative, an initiative that has now delivered feed-in tariff entitlements for a full 40 megawatts of solar power to be delivered across our city to achieve abatement of greenhouse gases over the life of those schemes and to bring jobs and economic investment to our city with large-scale renewables, helping to make our city the solar capital of Australia and an early adopter with the development of renewable energy at a time when we see other governments returning to thinking which could only be characterised as being out of the 1930s or 1940s when it comes to the energy system.
Finally, the government is progressing the development of a key election commitment, the capital metro project, light rail for our city. The Capital Metro Agency has been established; a board chairman and project director have now been appointed to permanent positions; and the development of a network integration study is well underway. We are also funding the development of a network master plan for future potential expansion of the Gungahlin to city line.
All of these initiatives demonstrate how this Labor government is honouring its election commitments, helping to make our city a better place to live for all of its residents and continuing to deliver good government for the people of the ACT.
DR BOURKE (Ginninderra) (4.21): Mr Hanson said yesterday:
The Canberra Liberals have a different view about the role of the ACT Legislative Assembly from that of the Labor Party and the Greens. We do not see
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