Page 3857 - Week 13 - Thursday, 18 October 1990
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and comprehensive way. Members of the Assembly will note that the strategy is for the 1990s. It is long term, with long-term objectives, not a quick fix. However, the 1990-91 environment budget statement provides the financial basis for beginning this task.
As part of developing this long-term strategy, we need to know what the demands will be on the environment in the ACT and the subregion at the turn of the century. The Government, through its participation in the south-east regional forum, is working on a green paper on regional planning issues for the ACT and subregion.
From the work done in this context, we now know that the subregion has a projected population of about half a million by the year 2000. While bringing clear and welcome economic benefits, this growth puts stresses on our air, water supplies, transport system and, more importantly, land. There will be more consumers of energy, more waste to manage, more construction works and many more cars. We need to think carefully about what actions we can take in the early 1990s to ameliorate these effects, so that Canberra remains a clean and healthy place in which to live and work in the year 2000.
To this end, the Government is adopting a two-pronged approach. It is currently formulating a policy on sustainable development, as a means of ensuring that development decisions proceed on an informed basis of their long-term effects. Secondly, the Government has developed a land use legislation package which integrates environmental assessment into the planning, approvals and leasing processes. The draft land use Bills are about to be re-released for a second round of public comment. These reforms squarely put our focus on considering environmental impacts as an integral part of the decision making process.
To make our environment strategy work, we also need to coordinate our actions with those of the surrounding regions. In this area, the south-east regional forum provides an ideal vehicle for the exchange of information and for establishing the environmental imperatives for the subregion. In addition, the ACT environmental management agencies liaise regularly with New South Wales State and local government counterparts on issues as diverse as waterways, feral animals and noxious weeds. The ACT has a lot to offer the subregion in terms of its expertise in managing the local environment.
One example of a coordinated approach was the regional conference "Working Together - A Joint Solution to Recycling" which was held in July and which was attended by Mr Duby. The conference participants agreed that a regional recycling centre be established. I think that a cooperative response to a shared environmental problem is a very good one.
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