Page 454 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 28 June 1989
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
I would now like to discuss wood burning stoves. My department for some time now has had a little booklet out which we have advertised and have asked people to read before they ever think of buying a wood stove. This booklet is very interesting and I have read it myself. I do not have a wood burning stove - I use electricity - but the booklet explains ways of not polluting the air with smoke from wood stoves. As we all know, on a very cold night when the clouds are low you can see the smoke all over the city, and we know that it comes from wood burning stoves. If people would take a little bit more care and would get this booklet from our department when they went out to buy a stove, we would not have this problem.
One other suggestion is very interesting. If we were to run our hot water pipes through these stoves, we would also find we would have wonderful hot water, we would not need to boost our solar systems, and we would not require as much electricity at night.
As for cars and problems with buses, my department and ACTION are moving to new buses that are lead free and also have pollution control. We have had a lot of problems with the old Leyland buses, which belch out smoke every time they start up. I hope after the new budget these buses will be sold, but they may not be in that sort of a state. We will not have very many of these buses on the road and this will solve the problem.
As the new buses come on, we will be slowly getting rid of all the old ones. My department has been looking at this matter for some time and, as the money becomes available, I am sure you will be very happy with the changes. Of course, we have lead free petrol, but we have got to put up with the fact that not everybody has a new car. We all know that even with lead free petrol we have to be very careful. Somebody has only to put a couple of tanks of leaded petrol into their car and that will damage the control and we will have another gas problem. I say to Mr Moore that my department in the registration of vehicles is now looking at ways of checking these things in cars to ensure that this does not happen.
I am sure that Mr Moore realises - and this is not my portfolio but the Chief Minister's - that the last thing that any member of the ALP does is to madly go around cutting down trees. Apparently Australians are big at cutting down trees. When I was in Israel once, I met a gentleman who had grown up during the Second World War - he was one of our guides - and he was telling me how much he liked Australians and what wonderful people they were. He said, "There's only one thing I've got against Australians. During the war when we were little and your troops were marching through, they went mad, and they cut down every tree they found". He said, "We're desperate for trees in this country and we've spent the rest of our lives trying to plant them". His nicest story was that he needed new
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .