Page 1401 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 6 May 2015
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MR HANSON: Minister, do you stand by, or do you agree with, the Attorney-General’s view that the level of outlaw motorcycle gang activity here in the ACT is low?
MS BURCH: I do have confidence in the advice that the Attorney-General, as the then minister for police, provided to this community. We have become aware of increased activity and an increased presence by the Comancheros in town and outlaw motorcycle gangs.
Mr Hanson interjecting—
MADAM SPEAKER: Stop, please.
MS BURCH: As that activity increases, so, indeed, will our response.
Environment—climate change
MS FITZHARRIS: My question is to the Minister for the Environment. Minister, what sorts of actions is the government taking to help tackle the issue of climate change?
MR CORBELL: I thank Ms Fitzharris for her question. The government has a strong program to respond, as a city government and as a regional government for the territory, to ensure that, as a territory, as a city, we are driving down our own greenhouse gas, our own carbon footprint. Of course, we have legislated a 40 per cent by 2020 greenhouse gas reduction target. As a jurisdiction we are very focused on achieving the outcome set out in our greenhouse gas reduction legislation and we have committed, as part of that, as members would know, to the delivery of a 90 per cent renewable energy target for our city. That target is the key plank of a comprehensive program to drive down greenhouse gas emissions.
We have seen the latest advice from the UN’s lead negotiator for the Conference of the Parties in Paris later this year, where nation states will come together to try and reach a binding international agreement to drive down greenhouse gas emissions and keep climate change within the scientifically accepted guardrail of no more than two degrees. Her advice to all Australian governments, both federally and state and territory, is very clear, and that is that the age of coal is over, that we need to drive down our greenhouse gas emissions and predominantly we need to do that through the decarbonisation of our electricity supply sectors.
So right here in the ACT we are putting in place policy measures that reflect that internationally accepted consensus and scientific position. And we are doing so in a way that helps create jobs and opportunity in the new innovation economy that is centred on low carbon technologies. The delivery of our 90 per cent renewable energy target is helping to drive investment and jobs in our local economy.
We also know that the target is starting to see results. It is starting to see results through an eight per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over the last two
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