Page 263 - Week 01 - Thursday, 10 February 2022
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them. The Greens campaigned on including the right to a healthy environment in our Human Rights Act. We have done so in acknowledgement and support of the tireless work of local academics and environmental experts in the past, and in anticipation of the work of local environmental organisations to come.
I was really pleased that we managed to get this into the parliamentary and governing agreement. No other state or territory in Australia has this right yet, but most UN member countries do. If this motion passes, the ACT will once again step onto the international stage and be a national leader.
I have spent a lot of time thinking about this commitment. I am proud to stand here today and introduce a motion that calls on the government to take the next steps. My motion calls on government to consult with stakeholders and set the time frame to introduce the right into our Human Rights Act. What is the right to a healthy environment? It is a simple question with a long answer. This is a human right to exist in a healthy environment. It is a right for you and me, and every Canberran, to live in a healthy environment.
Our natural environment is everything; it is our air, our water, our soils, our biodiversity, our ecosystems and our climate. If we are to live, and to live well, it needs to be healthy and free from pollutants. Our environment is precious, independently of people. We share this planet with plants and animals. This planet has a rich history stretching billions of years and a future of endless possibility if we people allow that. But today I will focus in on the human right and how we affect our environment and how that affects us.
Every decision we make impacts the natural environment. We need to understand that and to start making our choices on that basis, because an unhealthy environment means unhealthy Canberrans. At its worst, it means dead Canberrans. We have already seen that. Climate change induced heatwaves and the smokepocalypse we experience in summer are good examples. COVID is awful, but I note that it was only yesterday, after two years in the pandemic, that deaths in Canberra from COVID matched our deaths caused by a few months of smoke from the Black Summer fires. An unhealthy environment is a killer.
Now, all our human rights are interdependent. The right to a healthy environment is linked to a range of existing rights in the Human Rights Act. Those include the right to life, the right to culture and other rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, and the right to freely express yourself. The inclusion of a right to a healthy environment strengthens existing rights and recognises what we have long known—that people cannot live a healthy life unless our planet is healthy too.
My motion is a long one—we aim for the longest motions here in the Assembly; we Greens like a bit of detail—and it is an important one. We set out the context in that motion so that everybody can see why we think this is important and why it needs to happen now. We explain the right to a healthy environment in the context of our climate emergency. We are in a climate crisis. Our environment is under a lot of pressure from urban sprawl, overconsumption and pollution. And climate change is compounding all of it. We cannot look at the effects of climate change—we cannot
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