Page 249 - Week 01 - Thursday, 24 February 1994
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Madam Speaker, following our report we were given to understand that wind electrics were being looked at carefully by ACTEW. One of the things that we found is that wind electrics are becoming cheaper and cheaper as more and more people are using them. That is a very encouraging sign because they have clear advantages where the appropriate spot can be found. We finish our report, Madam Speaker, by looking at the implications for the ACT. I hope that this report will continue the discussion on this issue and keep awareness of generation of power as part and parcel of the thinking of this Assembly.
MS ELLIS (11.41): I would like briefly to follow on from the remarks that Mr Moore has made on tabling this report. As a member of the committee I have had the opportunity to take a continuing interest in this subject. A point that I think I recall making at the time of the tabling of our original report on this subject and that I would like to reiterate today is that issues concerning solar energy or alternative sources of energy have well and truly passed the stage where they are regarded only as trendy issues. They are now part of our day-to-day consideration of our environment and of how we can better improve our living conditions, and viable environmentally safe alternatives.
Australia, I think, leads the world in certain areas of this science. There is a great incentive to see exactly what we can do with the full development of these ideas and these incentives. We could have a very strong export program in them. I am convinced that that is a possibility. In some areas of the development of this industry that is already the case. There is extraordinary potential available for this country to take on and to develop some areas to a point where we could lead the world in a physical sense, not just in a scientific sense. I think that members of this place need to think of that occasionally.
I endorse this report not only for its contents. The mechanism of tabling a report such as this creates continuing debate. Questions continue to be raised on these issues and there is continuing emphasis by our community on them. As I said at the outset, no longer is this trendy; it is now essential. Anything that we can do to assist, as members of this small Assembly, in the big world of the environmental cares of the world in general, any one small issue that we can do to enforce such a philosophy, has to be commended. It is my pleasure to join the chair of this committee in commending this report to the Assembly.
MR WESTENDE (11.43): Madam Speaker, I shall be very brief because everything that has to be said has been said. I concur fully with what Ms Ellis and Mr Moore, the chair of the committee, have said. Likewise, believe that Australia could be at the forefront of some of those technologies. Indeed, in certain instances it is already. I commend the report.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
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