Page 1174 - Week 04 - Friday, 23 April 2021
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The 2020-21 budget includes significant investments, targeted for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community in the short to medium term. Among these investments is $425,000 towards what will ultimately be a $10 million purpose-built facility for Gugan Gulwan Youth Aboriginal Corporation. Gugan Gulwan is of course an invaluable organisation in our community. Ensuring that it has the facilities that it needs to deliver services is an absolute priority for the government. That is why we included it in ACT Labor’s 2020 election platform and why we commit this funding in our first post-election budget.
The budget also includes almost $4.9 million to continue our work to implement the recommendations of the Our Booris, Our Way review. Members are well aware of the significance of this review and the importance of its recommendations. Labor acknowledged this by committing, at the election, to fully implement those recommendations, in partnership with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community. In this spirit of partnership, part of the $4.9 million will support the ongoing operation of the Implementation Oversight Committee. This budget brings our overall investment in addressing the Our Booris, Our Way recommendations to around $15.7 million.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elected Body, which will go to new elections in NAIDOC Week this year and into caretaker mode in May. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all members of the current Elected Body. It has been a very stable and effective body. I particularly want to acknowledge the leadership of Katrina Fanning, who has not only led the Elected Body here in the ACT but represented the ACT admirably on the coalition of peak Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations and in the Joint Council on Closing the Gap.
Environment—green buildings
MS CASTLEY: My question is to the Minister for Water, Energy and Emissions Reduction. The government’s new Dickson office block is the first in the ACT to be all-electric and gas free. You were reported as saying last year about the Dickson building—and I quote:
Doma and the ACT government are demonstrating that new commercial buildings can be gas-free, and it lays down the challenge to others in the industry to match this climate-friendly standard.
In fact the Greens’ own policy states that this government leadership will make it easier for private developers to transition to gas-free development by ensuring that all newly leased government buildings are all-electric. Minister, why then is the newly leased government building next door, at 220 London Circuit, on gas?
MR RATTENBURY: It is a source of frustration for me, but that building was commissioned and designed prior to the Dickson office block, before this became a formal government position.
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