Page 759 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 5 April 2022
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views on FOGO, get in touch. Use the government FOGO email address—it is on the website—and participate in the survey. Get in touch with the minister, with me, with Ms Lawder or with any of your local members. Let us know how we can improve this service and let us know, generally, how we can roll out a just transition to a safer climate.
We will have a lot of these operational issues as we transition to zero emissions. We know that we need to act on climate. There is no more debate here about that; but it all comes down to how well we do it, how quickly we do it, and how we bring everybody along with us on the journey. The Greens are happy to support Minister Steel’s amendments to the motion.
MRS KIKKERT (Ginninderra) (3.28): I thank Ms Lawder for bringing this very important motion before the Assembly. With the FOGO trial happening in my electorate of Ginninderra, I have received many pieces of feedback from residents involved in the trial. This feedback has been largely negative. Let me be clear, though: the intentions of the FOGO trial are supported and the ability to dispose of food waste in the green bin is welcomed. What has been roundly rejected is the switch from weekly rubbish collection to fortnightly. This issue has a direct impact on day-to-day living for all Canberrans and it will have even more of an impact on the residents of Ginninderra as a whole.
The latest census tells us that residents in my electorate of Ginninderra have larger average household sizes than the rest of the ACT. More people per household naturally leads to more domestic waste, and more domestic waste requires weekly pick-ups. This is common sense—something that is frequently lost in this government.
The move to reduce public collection is just another sign that this government is tired, arrogant and out of touch. With their blinders on, Labor and the Greens have tunnel-visioned on the needs of the inner city, which has lower than average household sizes and lower than average numbers of children in nappies, while forgetting about the needs of the family-dominated suburbs.
Ignoring the needs of families is classic behaviour by the Greens, as evidenced by their recent discussion paper on active travel, which is full of ideas for disadvantaging Canberra families. Take, for instance, the idea to implement car-free days. How much more difficult would car-free days make the weekly shopping run or school drop-off? Or how about the idea of reduced parking in areas with good public transport? Should a single mother have to walk hundreds of metres from a shopping centre with her trolley to go to her car, just because there happens to be a bus stop nearby?
These family unfriendly policies are part of a larger but unspoken philosophy of a radical attitude towards population. Federal and local Greens vaguely hint at this in their party platforms by calling it “sustainable populations”. Greens patriarch Bob Brown has recently been more up-front about this Greens philosophy, calling, “the human herd” unsustainable.
Maybe this mentality of calling humans a herd, like a bunch of farm animals, has inspired the Greens’ need to force more Canberra families into tiny apartment battery cages!
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