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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 6 Hansard (18 June) . . Page.. 2058 ..

MS DUNDAS

If Mrs Dunne's amendment is successful, then the Standing Committee on Planning and Environment of this Assembly can investigate how we can best work with big businesses in the ACT to make public this information and provide key strategies for actually reducing their emissions and leading the way in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions as a practical outcome of the greenhouse strategy. Hopefully, with this amendment, there will be greater consideration of the impact on businesses and how this should be implemented. I'm sure the committee would look forward to a submission from Mrs Burke on the practicalities of how this will work.

Just to respond to some other points that have been made during this debate: this motion, with the amendment, is not in any way inconsistent with the ACT greenhouse strategy; it is actually a practical example of something that we can be doing about greenhouse-to know what it is that we're actually emitting to find strategies as to how we can reduce that. We can't just say that we're progressing with greenhouse strategy and we're reducing greenhouse gas emissions if we don't actually know how many greenhouse gases we are putting out there.

I'm glad that this Assembly will agree to actually take the step to get government agencies and departments to report on their greenhouse gas emissions, so that we can see how well we're doing or how badly we're doing and where we do need to take immediate steps as part of the greenhouse strategy.

Ms Tucker made some important points with regard to that strategy and how it has been implemented across the ACT and been reviewed, to which the Minister for the Environment responded. But Ms Tucker did ask me to make one last point, which was that the original work done on the ACT greenhouse strategy was not done by the then Liberal government by themselves and by Mr Humphries. The Greens, as members of this Assembly, were actively involved in that.

I would like to flag that that is something that the older parties are wont to do, that is, claim credit for all the work that ever happened whilst they were in government and not recognise that other parties and crossbench members are putting in a lot of work to encourage the governments and to support the governments in the actions that they are taking. So I'll just flag that for our older parties to remember.

I thank members of this Assembly for their support. This will mean that we are the first jurisdiction in the world to have public reporting on greenhouse gas emissions. We are making history today and we are leading the way on environmental disclosure. I thank the Assembly for their support in that way.

Amendment agreed to.

Motion, as amended, agreed to.

Sitting suspended from 5.45 to 7.32 pm.

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