Page 842 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 25 July 1989
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
environment. I believe that it was a very significant statement and I endorse it totally. It was a statement which embraced a great many of the very critical aspects of environment which I believe the Federal Labor Government has addressed extremely well, and it is the only possible government at the Federal level which could have done as much on the environment. The Prime Minister's announcement, as Mr Humphries indicated, embraced a very large sum of money - I think it is over $500m - to be spent on environment projects, and they varied greatly. As you probably know, the major thrust of that environment statement was looking at the Murray-Darling river system and at the problems of salination that have occurred in that system.
A great deal of the effort in the Prime Minister's current environment strategy is aimed at addressing the problems of soil degradation and salination in that area of Australia. Where his statement was extremely significant, it seemed to me, was that it had the support of the Premiers of South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria, all of whose States are affected by that Murray-Darling system and the soil degradation and salination problems.
It might be of interest to members to note that the ACT, I believe, is the largest population centre within the Murray-Darling Basin, which is quite a large geographic area but mainly a rural one. This is the biggest population centre, so I believe it is up to us to protect that river system in every way that we can. Indeed, we are doing that by looking after the Murrumbidgee River and by ensuring that we do not in any way destroy that river or its banks and so add to the problems in the Murray-Darling area.
The ACT, of course, will benefit by the broader issues that the Prime Minister's environment package includes - for instance, the reafforestation program, the research that is to be undertaken into the greenhouse effect and so on. They will all be of great importance to the ACT in our broader concerns with the environment. So, as such, there is no financial package in it for us. But I think there is a great deal for us to learn from it, and we will certainly be taking advantage of all of the information and all of the experience that flows from this very major strategy being undertaken by the Federal Government.
MR HUMPHRIES: I wish to ask a supplementary question. Do I understand the Chief Minister to be saying that the package entails no expenditure at all on the ACT?
MS FOLLETT: Not as far as I am aware, Mr Speaker. I thought I had made it clear that there is no financial package as such in it for the ACT, but of course we will benefit, as we do, from the Federal Government's initiatives in the environment area. I think what is of major concern here is that the Federal Government's environment strategy has the endorsement of three other
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .