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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Wednesday, 23 June 2004) . . Page.. 2535 ..

Greenhouse targets for transport would also be a step forward. The government has set targets for public transport patronage, but it is not clear whether meeting those targets would bring our greenhouse gas emissions back down to pre-1990 levels. Every year there are more vehicles on the road in the ACT. Without clear targets accompanied by a clear strategy our transport emissions will continue to rise. Proper assessment of a number of scenarios may demonstrate that we need to adopt some novel, and perhaps even drastic, measures to get residents to consider more environmentally sound transport choices.

The issue of staffing is a perennial one for Environment ACT. This government has announced a number of laudable environmental strategies and initiatives, but there is not the staff on the ground to deliver on those initiatives. An extra dedicated person with responsibility for overseeing action to reduce government emissions could make a substantial difference, if they are backed by a top-down political commitment from the environment minister.

Possibly we need to explore things even further than the motion put forward by Ms Tucker. We have recently seen the major announcement by the Howard government in relation to renewable energy and the solar cities program. There is $75 million committed to some ideas that could be working here in the ACT. Is the Minister for Environment lobbying the federal government to be a beneficiary of the good ideas that are going to come out of the Howard initiative? I am not saying all the ideas in the federal government’s plan are useful but the ones that are useful—such as the solar cities trials and the wind monitoring ideas—are things that would work greatly here in the ACT. That requires a commitment from this government to try to make sure these initiatives can work, and to lobby the federal government to get those resources into the ACT.

We need a political commitment from the mouth of the environment minister to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. Once we have that commitment we can start to see some changes here in the ACT. For far too long the government has been hiding behind the excuse that they must do years of consultation before they take any real action to reduce environmental impacts. The time for talking is over; the time for action is now.

MRS DUNNE (5.15): I am happy to speak on this motion. I commend Ms Tucker for bringing forward this motion today. I also commend the sentiments of Ms Dundas on this important issue, which the Liberal opposition is glad and proud to support. I think I need to remind the Legislative Assembly just why we are glad and proud to support this motion.

Back in 1996 the ACT Legislative Assembly resolved that we should have greenhouse gas reduction targets. Shortly before the Kyoto conference on climate change the then Minister for Environment, Mr Gary Humphries, who was then my boss, went to Japan and announced at a conference there—not the Kyoto conference but the one that went before it—that the ACT government would work towards reducing the territory’s emissions of greenhouse gases to their 1990 level by 2008 and would reduce emissions to 20 per cent below that level by 2018.

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