Page 906 - Week 03 - Thursday, 7 April 2022
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developing ways to respond to climate change and to adapt to what is going on in our environment.
With that in mind, I was really happy to bring a motion to the Assembly in February and really, really happy to see that resolution supported in this chamber. We have called for the right to a healthy environment to be introduced into our Human Rights Act because we know that the links between health and environment are absolutely essential. I am really pleased to see that that work is now proceeding.
The ACT Greens also made a lot of election promises around 2020. We wanted to make sure that the ACT government would bring a proposal to national cabinet for a national strategy on climate health and wellbeing for Australia. We are doing quite a lot of things here locally, but we are absolutely desperate for some national leadership on these issues.
We promised that we would develop an ACT government climate change preparedness strategy for the ACT health sector, ensuring that the sector recognises and responds to climate change risks for the health of patients, the delivery of care, infrastructure, service provision, the health workforce and supply chains. We said that we would ensure that ACT Health collects and reports on data to monitor progress against resilience indicators, including the continuation of the longitudinal survey and climate-related health impacts and costs.
The ACT government has been preparing for climate change. We have adopted a lot of policy responses already, including our ACT Climate Change Strategy 2019-25, our Living Infrastructure Plan: Cooling the City and some instruments that are coming in under that. We have also done quite a lot of work in our air quality monitoring and our building regulation sector. All of these are part of our adaptation and mitigation of climate change. These strategies focus on actions that set us up to deal with the effects and to reduce our impact on the planet. We are really looking forward to seeing a lot of these policies included as considerations in our new planning act.
On November 2021 the ACT government released its bushfire, smoke and air quality strategy. That is a whole-of-government approach to prevent, prepare for, respond and recover from significant bushfire smoke events and our management of the smoke from wood heaters. Unfortunately, we are likely to see an event like that again, so we need to be prepared. The strategy sets out key actions for the next four years, including strengthening wood heater emission standards, enhancing air quality monitoring and forecasting, identifying and supporting smoke refuges and providing economic support to those affected by severe bushfire smoke.
The Healthy Canberra: ACT Preventive Health Plan guides action to reduce the prevalence of chronic disease by addressing the specific risk factors and by aiming to support good health across all stages of life. That plan focuses on the promotion of active living, healthy eating and the design of broader environmental factors such as safe and accessible urban spaces, access to nature and other amenities. A strong focus of the plan is to create healthier places where people live, work, learn and socialise and to empower people with the knowledge, skills and motivation to live well.
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