Page 3043 - Week 10 - Friday, 8 October 2021
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around a place and say it is protected. No place on earth is protected from climate change. I am proud that, with Greens in government, the ACT has been taking climate action for over a decade.
As a party, we called for emission reduction targets 25 years ago in this Assembly. After gaining the balance of power in 2008, we renewed our call for legislated targets. They were passed into law in 2010. Since then, in every budget, including this one, the government has allocated the resources to meet those targets and protect our community’s wellbeing.
We are here for a second time this year putting forward a budget that responds to the times we live in, which are, as is well noted, most unusual times. We are confronting the expected challenges of climate change and the unexpected crisis of a pandemic. Both of these challenges call for a strong but clear-headed response from the government that not only takes decisive action but also works to keep the fabric of our community intact.
It will not surprise anyone here when I say that taking action to respond to climate change is a key motivator for all six Greens in this Assembly. Alongside that is our deep commitment to reducing inequality. This is the vision for a better normal that we took to the election and which we have worked so hard to achieve over the past year with our Labor colleagues through the parliamentary and governing agreement, both as ministers and on our crossbench. We believe that any response to major change requires us to work with the whole community and do our best to ensure a just transition from past ways to a new future. During times of crisis, such as the current pandemic, the gap between rich and poor grows. It grows wider, and those with the least are the most impacted.
As Greens, we base our policies on the evidence—what will work—and we take advice from the experts on how to achieve our vision. The COVID-19 pandemic has proven that in Australia we do have what is required to respond quickly when the need arises. In this case, we have made choices to roll out new vaccines and provide new lifesaving treatments. For a while, we chose to make child care free to unequivocally support flexible working, to stop demonising people who rely on government support and to lift those people above the poverty line.
This response, nationally and locally, proves that, while the future might have challenges, if we make the right choices we can rise up to meet them. This gives me hope that we can continue to build on our efforts to manage this health crisis, respond to climate change, protect our precious environment in this territory and do what it takes to stamp out inequality so that wellbeing is not reserved for some at the expense of others.
This pandemic is having a disproportionate effect on those who have low incomes, making the inequality gap even bigger. It is vital that we bear this in mind as we progress through the rest of this year and the immediate years to come. What we do now will make all the difference in the years ahead in terms of ensuring that people do not get left behind.
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