Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 10 Hansard (4 September) . . Page.. 3088 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

In the ACT, I believe that this Assembly must do all that is within its power to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the ACT as part of its commitment to Australian and international efforts to reduce climate change. No doubt the Government will soon tell us about the great things they are doing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the ACT. This is to be commended, but it misses the point of my motion. I am calling for a greenhouse gas reduction target against which these initiatives can be measured. The Government has moved towards a system of greater accountability within its Public Service, including the introduction of performance measures against which Government departments have to report. We see no reason why there should not also be a system of performance indicators for the Government's environmental programs. We made that point often in the Estimates Committee last year and at other times during debates in this place. While we will soon have baseline data on ACT emissions through the national greenhouse gas inventory, we have no idea of the greenhouse gas reductions that may be achieved in the ACT by greenhouse gas reduction measures that are being implemented. Having an ACT target will improve the impetus for tightening the effectiveness of these measures.

Greenhouse gas targets were originally proposed at national and international levels to provide measurable goals to work towards and a focus for action. Greenhouse gas emissions can be quantified relatively easily, particularly from the energy and transport sectors, which are the bulk of ACT emission sources; and there is a clear link between the level of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. It should be noted that the targets being discussed internationally, such as stabilising greenhouse gas emissions at 1990 levels by the year 2000, were derived through political negotiations and do not go far enough in actually reducing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere to levels that will prevent climate change. However, at least it is a start that can be built upon over time.

The previous Federal Labor Government set an interim planning target to reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions to 20 per cent of 1988 levels by the year 2005, and this target was endorsed by State and Territory governments in the inter-governmental agreement on the environment. However, it has always been unclear how this target should be applied to States and Territories. One interpretation is that each State and Territory should attempt to achieve the target in their own jurisdiction. Alternatively, the target could be regarded as a national average, with some States doing more than others to reduce emissions. Even our own Minister for the Environment does not seem to know how the national target should be applied locally, and just today we have received clarification of an answer to a question that we asked of the Minister here regarding the ACT's greenhouse strategy and targets which we have in place. It is, therefore, about time that this issue was clarified. The ACT should have its own greenhouse gas target. Of course, this target should be integrated with the national target and may not necessarily be the same as the national target, but the ACT should have its own target nonetheless. A key feature of the ACT is that a major proportion of our greenhouse gas emissions is actually emitted outside the ACT because we do not have our

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .