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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (21 June) . . Page.. 2364 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

establish a contractual arrangement for the supply of those new buses. Perhaps that is something that can be explored further.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I would like to move on to some other areas of the budget appropriation. The first point I would like to address relates to the government's much vaunted greenhouse strategy-and this is appropriate as we have just been talking about buses. I was very interested to see in the draft budget and in the budget that came out following the draft budget that the government had allocated the amazing sum of, on my calculation, $170,000 for new greenhouse initiatives this year. This is not a huge amount of money in context of the issue of greenhouse for our community and for our society overall.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I pursued this issue in the Estimates Committee and I asked for some advice on exactly where this money was being spent.

MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Corbell, do you wish to take your second 10 minutes?

MR CORBELL: Yes, thank you. What is the greatest component of the $170,000 allocated to new greenhouse initiatives this year? What is the biggest initiative? You would have thought it would have been something that was really practical in its community-wide impact. But what is it? It is a retrofit of energy efficient lighting in the department that proposed the initiative. Macarthur House will be used as an innovative pilot and demonstration project for other government and commercial buildings. An amount of $125,000 has been allocated to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in Macarthur House.

On its own, that is a laudable step. Any attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is welcome. But you would have thought that perhaps there would be more important priorities in terms of greenhouse gas emissions than the lighting system in Macarthur House, which just happens to be the home of the department that proposed the initiative. So I think the government's priorities are again misplaced in this regard.

Let me contrast the allocation of $125,000 with where the rest of the greenhouse money of $55,000 is going. The government has announced a commercial sector energy efficiency improvement program where assistance will be provided to small and medium-sized commercial enterprises to undertake energy audits as a precursor to implementing energy efficiency improvement programs. That sounds like a good idea. How much money has been allocated? $15,000.

Mr Rugendyke: I will support you. Amend it out.

MR CORBELL: Mr Rugendyke says, "Well, let's amend it out." Mr Rugendyke, if we amended it out there would not be any money for greenhouse gas initiatives. That is not what we want. Mr Rugendyke, we would like to see the government spend more but, as I am sure you are aware, under Westminster practice and procedure only the executive has the power to spend more money.

Mr Rugendyke: Has the purse strings. Yes, you've got it.

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