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

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 11 Hansard (26 September) . . Page.. 3482 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

Over the past two days many analysts have been grappling with whether this budget will contribute to the longer-term economic prosperity of the ACT. Clearly, we need more than car rallies and futsal tournaments if Canberra is going to prosper. The Government is quite right when it says we have to use our existing strengths, so we have to make sure that we do not destroy those natural advantages in the process, and one of our key assets is our natural environment.

Much is made of tourism as a vehicle for job creation. Genuine ecotourism could be a good thing, but it is not really happening now. Ecotourism is one of the greatest cons of the last decade. If tourism is going to be economically sustainable, obviously we have to make sure that it does not destroy the very resource upon which it depends. At the moment Namadgi National Park receives at least hundreds of thousands of tourists a year but the management plan is in desperate need of updating. That is one of the reasons why cutting the environment policy program in the Department of Urban Services is very worrying to the Greens.

We applaud the new trainee rangers, and it is about time that the trend of decreasing ranger numbers was addressed. However, five trainees employed for a year does not replace the need for increases in the number of permanently employed experienced rangers. Over the past decade ranger numbers have been declining at the same time as the workloads, responsibilities and physical area being managed by rangers have all increased - all this with no added resources. If the Government is so keen on user pays and we are so strapped for cash, why cannot the tourism industry contribute a bit to maintaining the resource upon which they depend, or at least contribute to the cost of the new visitor centre?

Mr De Domenico: Is that a bed tax?

MS TUCKER: You could think of what sort of tax. It is the principle of user pays which you are so keen on. There are a few good initiatives for the environment, like money for the purchase and redemption of contaminated sites and funding for urgently needed weed control. The energy management program for government buildings is also good but could have been given more funding because it results in long-term savings both for the environment and for the economy.

It is a bit rich to say that this is a clean green jobs budget when I cannot spot one performance indicator that mentions this. The environmental goodies also have to be balanced against the cuts to environment funding in other areas of the budget, such as policy development. There has been no increase in funding for the environment, which means the real outcome is a cut of some 5 per cent when inflation is taken into account. I was interested to notice that it was only in the education statement so far that I have seen you take that into account. Why is environmental funding left out of the "budget at a glance" document? The fact that there is no separate environment budget probably reflects the fact that there is no environment department any more. We also cannot find any specific reference to the Commissioner for the Environment.

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