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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Wednesday, 23 June 2004) . . Page.. 2546 ..

will not even try. We have had endless reviews and we know what is the tenor of this government’s approach to energy efficiency and to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

I take members back to what was said in this place on 11 April 2002, when I successfully moved a motion asking the planning and environment committee to look at energy efficiency and the options for renewable energy. Mr Quinlan, the minister for energy, as I like to characterise him, but I do not know whether it is among his official titles, spoke in a fairly disparaging way on that day about how the reference was just a waste of time His priceless line was that he was not going to do any bleeding for sustainable energy because he thought it was idealistic and stunning, but totally useless. That was the tenor that was set very early in the life of this government about its commitment to doing things about energy efficiency, renewable energy and cutting greenhouse gas emissions, because that is what that reference was all about.

Quite frankly, this community is sick to death of the countless reviews and revisions, because they show a complete lack of commitment. Characteristic of how this government is lacking in commitment to the environment is the report on the review of the Environment Protection Act 1997 and the role of the Environment Protection Authority, which was tabled in this place yesterday by the Chief Minister and issued earlier.

The thing that struck me when I went through the report was that it was about a review of an act—when you review an act you have some things to do, usually to do with amending the act to do something or fix up something or reviewing a guideline to achieve something—and there were over 50 proposals in the report relating to fixing up the Environment Protection Act 1997, but very few of the proposals actually begin with a concrete active verb.

There is this one: “Proposal 25: amend section 52 so that authorisations commence when they are issued.” But most of them begin with such words as “Consider appropriate expansion”, “Consider the deeming provisions”, “Re-examine the way” and “Consider means of implementing”. Going further I found one and I thought, “Ah, that’s an actual thing.” I cannot find it now, but it was actually to do with liaising with somebody else to consider what might be done in this context.

There are 53 proposals in this document supposedly to fix up the Environment Protection Act that have almost no concrete steps, so you can rest assured that this government will not be taking any, given its track record of taking targets out of everything and wimping on the no waste by 2010 strategy. The report entitled ACT greenhouse strategy—review of assessment of options says just how important the no waste by 2010 strategy is, predicting a 17 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions just by implementing the no waste by 2010 strategy.

Why should we adopt this counsel of defeat from this government when the basic things are not being done? We should be trying. As Mr Smyth said, we may fail, but I would rather try and fail than not do anything, and I would rather try and fail and not achieve a no waste by 2010 target than say, as the current minister says, “It is too hard. Putrescible waste as 15 per cent of the waste treatment is too hard.” The no waste by 2010 strategy, by itself, will produce a 17 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and it is not being followed. We have a transport strategy which has ridiculously long

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