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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 6 Hansard (23 May) . . Page.. 1726 ..

ENVIRONMENTAL". (continuing):

The annual environmental accounts we are proposing will tell us about how many resources and how much energy the ACT Government is consuming and how much waste is being produced. They will also tell us about the stocks of natural assets we have, such as land, and what the major changes to these important natural asset bases have been. These accounts are to be developed in conjunction with the Commissioner for the Environment. I think it would also be appropriate to involve the ACT Statistician in this process.

Mr Speaker, I would like to speak briefly about the history of the development of environmental accounting. A moment ago I spelt out some of the serious deficiencies with our accounting systems. Fortunately, many institutions are starting to tackle the problem. Mostly, this has come about as a result of international consensus about the need to implement ecologically sustainable development. This is part of an overall shift in policy focus away from consideration of economic, social and environmental policies as separate issues to an integrated approach. The United Nations and the World Bank are doing a lot of work in the area, and a number of approaches are already being trialled. For example, the Netherlands has a system of physical satellite accounts already in place.

In Australia the Australian Bureau of Statistics has been provided with an additional $3.5m over four years for the development of environmental and resource statistics in an integrated set of accounts consistent with and relatable to the economic accounts. This is in response to meeting our obligations under agenda 21 signed at the Rio Convention which called for the development of national systems of integrated environmental and economic accounting. Australia has a further requirement to develop environmental accounts through the national strategy for ecologically sustainable development. The ABS work program covers a range of areas. For example, they are publishing monetary estimates of economic natural assets, assessing valuation methodologies for environmental degradation, and developing a range of resource materials and waste emission accounts, in physical units, showing stocks and major flows. It is this latter approach that we are proposing for the ACT. Although much of the work of the ABS is nationally focused, there is a substantial amount which is readily adaptable to the State and local level, and also to a government level of accounting. I think they would be quite interested to monitor the progress a government makes in actually putting this into practice, and provide assistance where possible.

Members may also be interested to hear that many private companies are also starting to develop environmental accounts. This is what the Australian Society of Certified Practising Accountants has to say about environmental accounting:

The development of an accounting standard to regulate disclosure about environmental activity is considered necessary ...

In many respects, the environment constitutes a set of economic resources similar to other economic resources used by humans. The earth, the forests, petroleum reserves, the air, the ozone layer have direct and indirect value to us. The fact that these resources are freely provided by nature has fuelled argument for the management of and accounting for the use of these resources rather than treating them as an externality or free good.

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