Page 1665 - Week 06 - Thursday, 20 May 1993
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MR MOORE: Mr Berry interjects, "Position, position", which I find quite strange, because I always thought it was location, location. Who knows what it is in Mr Berry's mind that makes him make a Freudian slip like that. Madam Speaker, it seems to me that the process that has been used in getting to this point has been very thorough. It reflects some of the very good work done by the Assembly and a positive response from the Minister in this area. I am delighted to have the opportunity to comment on it.
MRS GRASSBY (12.09): I was a member of this committee and was present when we had all the public hearings about wood-burning stoves. It was a very interesting time. There were two courses that the committee could have gone down, and they would have been to ban wood stoves or to regulate that they be used efficiently. Unfortunately, just asking people to do things efficiently will not work. You really would need a lot of police going around trying to get people to do the right thing with their wood-burning stoves. I am not sure that that works. The Chief Minister has often spoken about wintertime in her area. You see the smoke from these fires settling over the areas where you live and it does not lift until very late in the day. You often wonder why we have to put up with wood-burning stoves. Unfortunately, many people in Canberra put them in. They put them in when Canberra was a much smaller city than it is today. Planners then never looked forward to the extent they are now looking with the new plan. This will not happen again. We have ended up with a situation where smoke hangs over the city until very late in the day because of wood-burning stoves.
I think there will come a time when we will have to consider saying to people in new suburbs that they cannot put in wood-burning stoves or have open fires. I am sure that this will come at some time. Of course, we now have much more energy efficient houses. We are looking at ways of siting houses so that they collect most of the sun during the day, and, of course, we are putting better insulation into houses. I am sure that we will be able to see a day when people will not need wood-burning stoves, open fires or coke burners, which are very much in the past. In some of the older areas of Canberra, and, of course, where the Chief Minister is living in Downer, you will find that most of the people still have coke-burning stoves, which, as we know, pollute something terrible. I remember that as a child we used a coke-burning stove. I would not like to have to clean one, or to look after one now with the pollution they cause. I am sure that nowadays it is only the very old houses, and particularly the Housing Trust houses, that still have coke-burning stoves. They are not the best type of heating. They do pollute. I see Mr Cornwell shaking his head. He must have one in his house.
Mr Cornwell: No, I was just listening to what you were saying about them.
MRS GRASSBY: Let me tell you that I have lived with them and they are dirty things to look after. They do pollute the air a lot.
Mr Cornwell: I thought most of them were out by now, Mrs Grassby.
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