Page 3366 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 19 October 2022

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neighbour’s wood heater. Some wood heaters are more efficient than others, sure, but not everyone is burning right tonight, despite our pleas. God help the people that know this and cannot afford to make the switch to a safer, more efficient electric unit.

As I hoped my motion from not three months ago would show, we are trying to make sure that everyone who can make the healthy choice for their community is making the switch. That is a work in progress, but it is a small piece of a very big puzzle that has to fall into place, and quickly. What else might turn out to be like the smoke, something we do not even consider until it happens and needs an instant solution? We managed the smoke pretty well, considering. Might there be other unimagined symptoms of the climate crisis that are far harder, yet far more urgent to deal with, and far worse?

In preparing this motion, my office talked to and read the work of several local people doing important work and thinking in this space, including Sophie Lewis, who I have already mentioned, and also Dr Arnagretta Hunter, from the ANU Climate Change Institute, Dr Anthea Roberts, from the ANU’s School of Regulation and Global Governance, and Professor Sharon Friel, Professor of Health Equity and Director of the ANU’s Menzies Centre for Health Governance. As Dr Hunter told us, we have tremendously challenging times ahead and we need to practise the integrative thinking that Dr Friel talks about in her book, The Six Faces of Globalisation—a good read, members.

We need to look at what other jurisdictions are already doing. For example, Victoria has the Health and Human Services Climate Change Adaptation Action Plan 2022-2026, published earlier this year. That could serve as a starting point or a partial model. But we also need to regain our place as one of the world’s leaders in our action on climate. Let us offer the kids of Canberra the hope and inspiration they need by taking the action they are desperate to see.

My motion calls on the ACT government to ensure that public health services are adequately prepared for the impacts of a change in climate. It proposes that the ACT government pushes the National Health COAG, or equivalent, to create a national strategy on climate, health and wellbeing. It proposes the development of an ACT climate change preparedness strategy for our public health sector. It asks the ACT government to ensure that ACT Health collects and reports on data to monitor progress against resilience indicators. And, finally, it calls for reporting back to this Assembly on the progress of those endeavours by the last sitting of 2023. It is not enough to do this quietly, either; we should tell people, loudly, that we are doing all this.

That sense of betrayal that so many young people feel needs to be addressed in a real way. They need us to show them that we are really, really, seriously and responsibly thinking about what life will look like for them when they are our age or older. They need to see that we are acting really seriously, ambitiously and responsibly now to protect them from the things we may not live to see ourselves.

We also need to show other jurisdictions what is possible. We have a proud tradition of that here in the ACT, and perhaps most notably in the work we did to achieve our 100 per cent renewable energy target.


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