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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Wednesday, 3 March 2004) . . Page.. 632 ..

Increase economic opportunities and encourage creativity and innovation.

Obviously we would endorse those goals, as you would the goals that are listed here beside all the priorities. But, as I said, what we do not see is how we are going to do that. For example, let us have a little look at the environment and greenhouse issues. Under “Actions” it states:

The Government will:

… … … … …

Review and update the ACT Greenhouse Strategy and undertake research to better understand possible risks and implications for the ACT resulting from climate change.

That is really not doing very much. Okay, we are going to do some more research; I really support that. But we would like to see targets, we would like to see actions, we would like to see the government not building a freeway, and we would like to see the government actually doing research which shows us the contribution that we are making as a territory to greenhouse, particularly looking at the contribution of transport, and then rethinking its position on transport planning.

Water is also mentioned in here. I asked a question on notice about how the government is working with water conservation. I asked particularly whether it was looking at what Queanbeyan did with the Waterwise program. The answer was something like, “Well, that’s not Canberra; it’s different, so we wouldn’t really research that.” I guess I could have asked the question differently and asked, “Have you looked at Queanbeyan and would you like to consider doing something similar here?” I felt that the answer was really quite disrespectful of the importance of the question, when we know that Queanbeyan has saved so much water. For the government to just say, “Well, you know, it’s a different place,” without any analysis of our capacity to save water, and when we know how many not only residences but also clubs and commercial buildings built in the sixties do not have water-saving appliances—we know that we have the potential to save so much water and we know how much the government says it does care about this issue—it is pretty insulting. I would like to see in a social plan something that actually had targets such as—

MR SPEAKER: The member’s time has expired. Ms Tucker, would you move your amendment before you sit down.

MS TUCKER: I move:

Paragraph (1), omit “overwhelmingly”.

I seek leave for a short extension of time.

Leave granted.

MS TUCKER: I have two other brief points that I want to make. I have had serious concerns about the viability of the community sector in the ACT. The release of the

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