Page 236 - Week 01 - Thursday, 13 February 2020
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our economy, our citizens and our environment. This government is committed to keeping working Canberrans safe and will continue to respond to the impacts of climate change to avoid further risk to our community. I commend the motion to the Assembly.
MR RATTENBURY (Kurrajong) (11.44): I will speak to the amendment and close at the same time, as no-one else wants to speak. I briefly thank members for their various contributions. This is a complex area and, as I flagged in my opening remarks, I think it has posed a lot of questions that we have not had to really think about before. The intent in bringing this motion forward is to give us a forum and a mechanism to consider many of those questions.
I appreciate the contributions from the various ministers, highlighting some of the work that did take place. As I said in my opening remarks, I was very impressed by the reaction of our public service, our various experts in government and some experts around the town, from ANU and other places, that helped to provide input and guidance during that period, in the sense that, for something we did not really know much about, people worked very hard and they shared good information as quickly as possible.
I appreciate Mrs Dunne’s reflections particularly on that sense of people feeling tired after the hypervigilance of the summer. I think a lot of people are exhausted in their own way, and it is something we are going to need to keep an eye on through the rest of the year. I have seen some great initiatives from some bosses around town who are letting their workers have a bit of extra leave and these sorts of things, encouraging them to retake the leave that they lost over the summer. I think that is something that there is not particularly a government answer for but is one that we need to be mindful of.
I want to reflect on a point that Mrs Dunne made about people sending some of their family members away. It struck me, through this, that I know a lot of people who did—people who were able to leave town—but it reminds us very clearly of the social justice elements that arise out of climate impacts in these sorts of events. Some people did leave town, and for very good reasons, particularly those with young children or those who have particular health issues, because of wanting to avoid the impacts. But there were those who could not, who simply could not leave town. It underlines the need for us to be very focused on issues of a just transition, the need to be really mindful of those who cannot afford or do not have the option to take these steps that others are able to take. I was pleased that Mrs Dunne brought that point up.
In terms of the support which Mr Milligan raised, I actually lost count of the number of reports I read of events that were cancelled, be they elite or local. All sorts of sporting events were cancelled. I certainly know that, in the areas that I operate in, plenty of people just cancelled their personal training sessions or their personal exercise simply because they were being told they should not do it. I am sure that something that we really need to think about—and I have flagged it in here—is the need for sporting bodies to think about what their standards are going to be, to have not just heat standards, which many sporting organisations have now developed, but also air quality standards.
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