Page 2804 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 13 August 2019
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Members would be aware that around 143,000 tonnes of organic waste goes to landfill each year, around half of all landfill waste. A food waste avoidance campaign pilot targeted at householders and businesses will be designed, delivered and evaluated in 2019-20 to help reduce the amount of food waste going into landfill. The campaign will raise awareness amongst the community and business about the volumes of food unnecessarily wasted as well as the social, financial and environmental impacts of food waste and the steps to help reduce it.
Canberra households will be one step closer to a food organics service with a detailed feasibility study to be undertaken into the delivery of a FOGO processing site and facility. These initiatives will also encourage waste reduction and increased recovery in addition to another measure in the budget, the introduction of a new waste levy on the disposal of waste in our landfill. This is a sensible tool being used by governments across Australia to ensure that we are maximising the amount of material being diverted from landfill.
If the full cost of the levy were passed on, an average cafe producing eight to nine tonnes of waste per year would pay a total of only about $104 per year, or $2 a week. This encourages commercial operators to change their behaviour and find new ways of recycling or diverting their waste from landfill so that the levy will not apply to them. Applying a waste levy will bring the ACT into alignment with other jurisdictions currently implementing levies as part of their broader effort to responsibly manage waste but do so in a coordinated way.
This budget will strengthen our investment in city services and see a boost in suburban maintenance and upkeep of community infrastructure to ensure that our city remains clean, green and tidy. The increased funding will ensure that we can deliver ongoing services to new developments across the urban area, including cleaning, mowing, weed control and litter removal. We will continue to support the delivery of municipal services, plans and designs for a new depot particularly to support our city presentation team in the growing Molonglo Valley and the upgrade of depot facilities for city presentation staff at Nicholls. The new city services depot will help service the Woden-Weston area and the growing Molonglo region. Designs will also be prepared for a larger purpose-built city presentation depot.
Our budget will support better compliance across the territory with a focus on engagement and enforcement as part of a six-month trial specifically targeting priority regulatory matters across the Litter Act, dog management, public unleased land, and other matters that are under the purview of city services. The focus of the new engagement and compliance program will be dogs and animal welfare management. This initiative will help reduce problematic animal behaviour and ensure that Canberrans can feel safe when using our parks or taking a stroll through our suburbs on our footpaths and in our streets, reserves and other public spaces.
I want to end on a particularly positive note, a note that all of us on the government side as Labor members can be proud of, that is, our government’s commitment to providing secure and stable work for Canberrans. One particular initiative which shows our commitment to delivering secure local jobs across the public and private
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