Page 3868 - Week 13 - Thursday, 18 October 1990
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environmentally aware is one thing; actually getting them to accept the hard decisions that have to flow from an environmental awareness is quite another.
I think that our statement "Caring for our Environment" is a good start to that process. It encourages Canberra citizens to take a responsibility on their own shoulders. If they are taking that responsibility - for example, recycling in their own homes - it is much easier for governments to marshal the political will to go to the next step of saying, "We want to impose on our community other measures which might be inconvenient or even painful but which have an important effect on improving the quality of our environment". For example, one thing that I can see being difficult is the phasing out of CFCs in refrigerants. That will entail costs to individuals who use refrigerators or air-conditioning systems. We have to face up to that. The statement lists six different ways in which the public can ensure better quality air in the ACT. These include ways to improve the efficient use of wood-burning stoves, such as avoiding the use of green wood in fires, and encouraging people to reduce the levels of indoor pollution by increasing ventilation in domestic dwellings.
Other sections in this paper present ideas for conserving natural resources, avoiding land degradation and water pollution and enhancing our urban environment. I warmly commend this statement to the house. I believe it is an important first step in tackling those difficult problems. I would particularly urge members to ventilate the issues and the suggested solutions raised in this document as widely as possible, to build up that community support for these measures.
MR KAINE (Chief Minister) (5.03), in reply: Mr Speaker, in concluding the debate, I will be quite brief for two reasons: one is that I think the Opposition has already lost the debate anyway, and the other is that it is late, and it has been a long and tedious day. But there are just a couple of things that I would like to say. Firstly, I think the Opposition has clearly lost this debate. It has contributed very little to it. As usual, it is long on rhetoric but short on action.
Mrs Grassby: No, because conservation people know that we put our money where our mouth is. We are not all hiss and wind.
MR KAINE: You did not put any money where your mouth was while you were in government. You did and still do a lot of talking, but you did not put any money on the line. There is no question in the minds of the general public about where the weight of evidence is in terms of which government has prompted debate on this issue. It was not the former Labor Government; it is this one. I agree wholeheartedly with the Leader of the Opposition when, in her response to the strategy paper, she said that actions speak louder than words.
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