Page 277 - Week 01 - Thursday, 10 February 2022
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motion about storms. We know about fires and floods. This is so well known. We understand that if we do not act now we will get more and more severe disasters like that.
I was really happy to hear Minister Cheyne’s support. She is so passionate about the Human Rights Act and about undertaking the role to make sure that we update that act as we need to and that we implement it in a really firm way. And it was so good to hear about the background and the jurisprudence in that, and the consultation that she is obviously already really looking forward to doing.
I thank the Canberra Liberals and Ms Lawder for their support for this motion today, and I also thank them for their attention. We do have a clause in our parliamentary and governing agreement about this, and we are fulfilling that commitment. This motion actually goes quite a lot further than that original clause, and I am really pleased to explain why that is. When we negotiated that agreement a year and a half ago, the world was a very different place. We have, since then, had the UN Council pass a resolution recognising the right to a healthy environment. We have experienced so many more climate disasters. We have had IPCC reports. We have had code reds.
The entire conversation has shifted so far along that when I looked at that clause we negotiated, which was to consider the introduction of a right to a healthy environment, I realised that actually we have moved on. We need to skip to the next step. So this motion does not talk about considering introducing a right; this motion talks about a time frame to introduce the right. We will do it. We have thought about the consultation that we need to do. There are a lot of bodies who need to be involved in that, and we need to do it properly. There are so many people who have expertise in this and there are so many members of the community who want to be involved. We will bring back a time frame and we will introduce the right to a healthy environment into our Human Rights Act. I am really, really excited about that. I commend the motion to the Assembly.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Political parties—funding
MR HANSON (Murrumbidgee) (4.06): I move:
That this Assembly:
(1) notes:
(a) that, according to published reports, the ACT Greens made a profit of $188 771 on the 2020 ACT election, at the expense of ACT taxpayers from public election funding;
(b) following the 2020 ACT election, the ACT Greens have opened a new office in Braddon, claiming that “After our huge success in 2020, we took stock, identified our priorities and began looking for a new home”;
(c) the ACT Greens have stated with regard to the new office that “We’ll be fitting out the space over the coming weeks to ensure it’s ready for our work, meetings, [and] the 2022 Federal Election …”;
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