Page 3796 - Week 14 - Thursday, 10 December 1992
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Perhaps it indicates the weakness of the committee system in the Assembly that there are a limited number of people with limited amounts of time to perform tasks that are in many respects highly complex and highly technical, and which on some occasions might be, I would suggest with respect, beyond the means of our small band of 17 legislators.
I said that there were many recommendations that were no more than urges to have somebody do something else, and I want to quote a few. The recommendations include that the ACT Government recommend that the Australian and New Zealand Minerals and Energy Council consider measures, take steps to encourage, review, and undertake a concerted campaign to inform. It recommends that the ACT Government examine the feasibility of incentives, undertake a feasibility study into, investigate the feasibility that, recommend to the Australian and New Zealand Minerals and Energy Council that it assess, examine the feasibility of, sponsor research into, explore avenues whereby, consider the possibility of, and develop a program aimed at.
I think it is useful to have somebody to point out what is needed; but, for all the work that has been done on this, and it obviously has been quite considerable, the report does not do much more than that. It does a lot of finger pointing and a lot of saying, "There is the light on the hill"; but it does not actually get much further than the first few steps up the slope. It seems to me that this a real problem with our system. Some matters that we refer to committees in this Assembly are, I would respectfully suggest, too complex or technical to be dealt with in a short time by unqualified politicians. We saw this to some extent with the fluoride inquiry last year and the year before. An immensely technical matter was resolved, I think, more in a political way than in a technological way, and it does raise the question of just how appropriate some of those references are. We should very seriously consider this point in future before we rush into certain references.
There is, however, much good in this report, much that needs to be commended. There are many issues which are quite exciting and which I hope the Government will examine, with its greater resources and its better qualified assistance, and come up with positive action that will implement and progress the important issues that have been raised here.
Recommendations 3.2 and 3.6(1) essentially take into account the need for a national scheme to deal with problems associated with CO2 consumption and emission levels. The point that it is making is a quite reasonable one: There needs to be a national approach to that sort of question. We simply cannot effect wonderful changes in the ACT and expect to improve our own environment. It is not as simple as that. We are a small island in a much larger community. Even if we were to try to isolate our own sources of CO2 production and other harmful greenhouse gas emissions, we would still run up against the problem that there are vast numbers of interstate travellers who come to the ACT in trucks and who produce goods which they send to the ACT, which in turn produce greenhouse gases and CO2. It is impossible for us to expect that we can somehow isolate ourselves from these influences. It is inconceivable. That is why the idea of having a national approach is absolutely essential.
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