Page 3014 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 15 September 2015
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AP2: A new climate change strategy and action plan for the Australian Capital Territory—Implementation status report, prepared by the Office of the Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment—Government response.
I ask leave to make a statement in relation to the paper.
Leave granted.
MR CORBELL: Today I am tabling the government’s response to the implementation status report, a report on the implementation of Action plan 2: a new climate change strategy and action plan for the ACT. This report was prepared by the office of the Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment. The ACT’s second strategy action plan to address and act on climate change in the territory, AP2, was released in October 2012. Through AP2, the government requested that the Office of the Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment prepare periodic reports on its ongoing implementation and our progress towards the emission reduction targets established in the Climate Change and Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act 2010.
These reports are to answer a series of questions to enable the government to determine the overall success of the actions in AP2 in achieving reductions in greenhouse gas emissions or in adapting to a changing climate. These questions included how we are tracking against sector greenhouse gas reduction targets, what are the implications for developments in climate change science, how fit for purpose are the territory’s climate change adaptation policies, how do the territory’s targets and actions stand in relation to developments at a national and international level, and what new opportunities or challenges have emerged. These implementation status reports are to be delivered at regular intervals in 2014, 2017 and finally in 2020.
In March this year the commissioner, Mr Neil, and I joined together to release the first implementation status report. The government committed to responding to that, and the report I have tabled today satisfies that commitment.
The implementation status report presented the government with a total of 15 challenges and opportunities to improve climate change mitigation and adaptation activities. The government is already working on implementing many of these. For example, the report noted difficulties in determining the effectiveness of climate change mitigation actions due to the two-year delay in greenhouse gas emissions reporting.
In response to this, earlier this year I released an interim greenhouse gas inventory covering the 2012-13 and 2013-14 reporting periods. Until that time the ACT greenhouse gas inventory was prepared for a reporting period two years in arrears. This was due to some of the data contributing to the inventory being sourced from the Australian government’s national inventory report, which is also produced with a two-year delay.
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