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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Thursday, 26 August 2004) . . Page.. 4434 ..

What the Assembly might want to note is that this amendment runs contrary to the ACT and federal Greens’ stance on the Kyoto protocol. The Kyoto protocol undertakes that carbon sequestration is a valid abatement activity and sets out requirements in a document. The reference number is very long—it is CCC/CP/2001/13 add one. If, in the eyes of the ACT and federal Greens, this activity is sufficient for the whole of Australia under the national covenant, I think it might be sufficient for us just for the time being.

MRS DUNNE (11.04): I will speak to this and the subsequent amendment; they sort of go together. There seems to be an underlying approach by Ms Tucker, and to some extent the Greens generally—although perhaps I have not been reading as closely their documents on sequestration as I should have been—

Mr Quinlan: You want that reference number again?

MRS DUNNE: No thanks; not just now. There seems to be an underlying characteristic amongst the Greens to oppose trade-offs. They take the approach that businesses or energy providers should be forced to reduce emissions and get more for renewable resources, regardless of whether supplies exist and regardless of price. This is essentially a market-based approach to greenhouse abatement. Therefore we need to have all the market tools available to us.

If we went down the path suggested by Ms Tucker, it would be a departure from the New South Wales model. It would limit the capacity of people and firms in the ACT to deliver their targets. We tend to talk about geosequestration as though it were akin to the tooth fairy. I have given up belief in the tooth fairy—although I do not tell my children—but I think it is too soon to throw out the notion and rule out geosequestration; to knock out the possible method of reducing the greenhouse effect because we are not yet convinced that it might work, years ahead of the introduction of any particular scheme. As yet we do not have a foolproof scheme. But this does not mean that we should stop the search.

To rule out sequestration seems to be a move from the precautionary principle to the paranoia principle. It is akin to passengers on a sinking ship not getting into the life raft because it does not have airbags or perhaps not enough oars. I prefer an open-ended approach that does not prescribe methods of abatement. This will allow scope for new technology—perhaps genetically modified cows that are low-methane emitting—and not try to pick winners and losers, even before they are invented.

Finally, for the reasons I have outlined, I believe this scheme has the prospect of success—much less expansion to a national scheme—only if we implement it consistently and, dare I say, cooperatively with New South Wales.

MS DUNDAS (11.08): I am happy to support these amendments, which would exclude carbon sequestration from the list of eligible abatement activities. We have already cleared too much of our native vegetation and we need to start restoring it. But it would be wrong to see replanting of lost vegetation being used to allow electricity retailers to do nothing to secure more renewable energy supplies. Continuing to burn fossil fuels at

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