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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 8 Hansard (26 June) . . Page.. 2227 ..

MR WOOD (continuing):

leading the nation in recycling of garden organics, with a recovery rate of over 80 per cent. There is still a significant task ahead to reach the target of no waste by 2010.

Mrs Dunne has said we need innovative ways to accomplish that target. That is certainly the case, and we are looking for a new generation of technologies and ideas to do it. Ms Dundas is absolutely right. We have to see that food waste, across the whole of Canberra, is taken out of the dumping cycle and used-that it is put into some form of composting or other means used-to keep it out of the dumping area. There is no difficulty about that. Ms Dundas pointed to the problem-it is a growing problem in Canberra-of more and more people living in units and therefore not having a garden in which to dispose of their waste.

I live in a household of two people, mostly, with family and friends coming at weekends. Like most families in Canberra, we have been able to reduce the quantity of waste going into the rubbish bin once a week to less than a Woolworths shopping bag full. Indeed, some weeks we do not put it out at all. I have a compost bin and a garden, of sorts, that I put it into, but not everybody can do that.

Mr Humphries: You do not have children.

MR WOOD: I do not have children-I stress that point-although, at the weekends, very often I do. Having a garden is a very significant factor. One of the mechanisms we will be looking at in the future is whether, for those people who have gardens, we will provide a composting bin, although I would be surprised if there are very many gardens these days without a composting bin. I thought that was pretty standard procedure.

We understand the problem. I am full of admiration for the government which, some years ago, established this target of no waste by 2010. We do not yet have the answer as to how we are going to get every last bit of waste out of the system. There is quite a long way to go, but the easiest part of it is the organic material. So we will be focusing on that.

I have full sympathy with Ms Dundas' amendments. I support the idea of keeping at it, but I would not support the first of her amendments. We certainly would not go back to Chifley. That suburb was chosen because it had the best representation of what you find in Canberra. It was a very good sample area. We would not go back there-and I do not think we need a demographic contrast to Chifley.

We certainly need to keep a very heavy focus on how we are going to achieve this target. I thank members. The mover of the motion will thank members for their support. She may indicate that it is likely we will not support the first of those amendments, but will support the second amendment.

MS TUCKER (11.07): The Greens congratulate ACT Waste for initiating this trial-and also thank the residents of Chifley who participated in the trial. We have always been supportive of the target of no waste to landfill by 2010. This was initiated by the previous Liberal government and we are very supportive of it. It is quite a visionary target, as it highlights that, not only is it ideal, from a sustainability perspective, to have a waste-free society but that it is also possible for this to be achieved, in a foreseeable timeframe, if the political will is there.

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