Page 2695 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 21 September 2022
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at the moment. They are upgrading their fleet, every aspect of it. I know this because I worked with them with my company. So we are moving towards a world where it will be zero emissions. It is already part way there. This is going in extremely efficient delivery loads. It is extraordinarily difficult for me to think of anything that we are doing in this very wealthy, high consumption city right now that actually meets as many of the sustainability tests that I have just set out.
I encourage people to think really hard about what they need. I think it is always really good for us to be thinking sustainably. But we also need to understand that we do actually need some things. It is not very helpful to make people feel guilty or to spread myths about recycled paper and FSC certified paper, which are really useful resources that are being delivered in a really efficient way and that can then go into your yellow-topped bin at the end of the process and get recycled. It is not actually that helpful to tell people they should feel guilty about that. That is something that they need that is currently being produced in about the best manner we possibly can. It may be that, in the future, we come up with something even better, and I look forward to that day, but right now this one has passed my test.
MS LAWDER (Brindabella) (5.02): I rise to speak in support of Mr Parton’s motion today, in my capacity as shadow minister for the environment and city services and shadow minister for seniors. I appreciate the desire of so many Canberrans to reduce waste in our community.
I am sure those of us in the chamber have various views about the usefulness of the Our Canberra newsletter, but that is not what I am here to talk about today. Like some residents—I guess many residents—throughout the ACT I have seen the Our Canberra newsletter having been swept into gutters or having gone flying about in suburban streets.
It is possibly something like when I spoke to the minister for city services about mowing and about grass going directly into Lake Tuggeranong. He assured me that this does not happen—until I sent him photographs of the grass on Lake Tuggeranong, with the mower in the background. I am sure I will get that same argument—that this does not happen, and that copies of the Our Canberra newsletter do not go flying into gutters and about in our streets. But I have seen it and so have other Canberrans. This is not only an eyesore; it contributes to the untidiness of our suburbia and it certainly contributes to waste in our waterways.
As Mr Parton has already noted, there is an economic and environmental cost to delivering this newsletter 11 times a year. I have been here for long enough that I can remember when it was delivered four times a year; then, magically, it increased—from memory, in an election year.
It has been estimated that approximately 1,612 trees every four years could be saved if the newsletter reverted to being delivered quarterly—1,612 trees every four years. In the ACT we have declared a climate emergency. We talk about the sky falling in, “Woe is me; the world as we know it is coming to an end,” yet we can devote thousands of trees to producing this newsletter!
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