Page 450 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 22 March 2022
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
that we get everyone at every level—government, businesses and people in the community—working together to try and deal with this crisis. I am really happy to be part of a government that has brought in 100 per cent renewable electricity, and I would really like to see this calculator go a little bit further than electricity. We already have renewable electricity, so we do not need to reduce any further the carbon footprint on that. We can make great gains with more efficiency, and we can make really big strides forward in that, but we need to be looking at our whole footprint at this stage of the game.
Minister Rattenbury commissioned the Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment to take a more holistic view of our carbon footprint, and Minister Vassarotti tabled that report at the end of last year. It was a really interesting report. It showed that our total carbon footprint in Canberra is actually 16 times higher than just the little bit we have been dealing with so far—the electricity, transport and waste—and we have good, solid, mature policy on electricity, transport on waste. We have 100 per cent renewable electricity. That is fantastic. We have a lot of really good programs for efficiency and batteries. We have agreement, and we are now moving ahead, with helping people to transition off gas in an orderly way to make sure that we are not replacing old gas appliances with new gas appliances. That is the best, cheapest and easiest way to do that. We have a lot of things going in the right direction there.
We have a bit more trouble with transport. We know that transport is a really big part of our emissions footprint at the moment, and we are trying as hard as we can to give people lots of good choices so that they can shift to zero emissions transport. It is good to see so many good choices. EVs are wonderful. They are expensive; not everybody can afford one and there is zero emissions public transport—buses and the light rail. Zero emissions active transport is the original zero emissions transport, as is simply travelling less. COVID brought us a whole new world of flexible working arrangements—working from home and simply driving around less. These have come at a really good time, with petrol and diesel prices going up. We understand that we need to make these changes for so many different reasons.
We also have some really good policies coming up with respect to waste, which has been a bit of a problem for a lot of us who come from the recycling sector. We have been worrying about our waste for a long time. We are finally rolling ahead with a FOGO trial, and that is going to make sure that we are no longer sending food waste to landfill, where it releases methane, which is a really potent carbon gas—a greenhouse gas. It really good to see that rolling out. We have a Love Food Hate Waste program that is also helping us reduce our food waste, but we need to crack on and start dealing with the rest of the footprint.
Before having this role, I ran a carbon diet project, where I cut the footprint of my household by 75 per cent by running different experiments. It was an interesting experience. It showed that it is quite a complicated field if you are coming into it new. There is a lot of information out there, and I understand the need to try and synthesise some of that and make it a bit accessible and a bit easier for people to understand, but it also shows that we have a lot of problems in our society with consumption. There are a lot of areas where we can make changes. Most of those areas, I am pleased to
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video