Page 1888 - Week 06 - Thursday, 5 May 2005
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showed that the government was going to be better on the environment than the Greens. I am afraid this budget gives the lie to that. It is very disappointing to see these cuts, staff losses, broken promises and minimalist new initiatives.
The Conservation Council is the ACT’s peak environment community group, which plays an incredibly important and vital role as an advocate for the environment. It also plays an important role, much used by this government, in representing to the government the community views related to the environment, which has probably saved the government a great deal of embarrassment in the past, and it is a little unfair of the government to bite the hand that feeds it. This ACT funding cut comes on top of the recent news that the Conservation Council will lose its federal funding. This cut inspires me to ask whether the government is afraid of criticism. After all, if you are cutting funds to key environmental areas, you had better cut the capacity of the one group in the community that has the role of commenting on that, so that its capacity to comment is lessened.
The review of the Office of the Commissioner for the Environment, recently undertaken, stated that the current resourcing level for the Office of the Commissioner for the Environment is inadequate to enable it to fully meet its statutory responsibilities, which could result in adverse environmental impacts. Yet the government has chosen to reject the recommendation and subsequent request by the Office of the Commissioner for the Environment for additional funds.
Likewise, the government has broken its election promise to provide $4 million to retrofit some public housing stock for energy efficiency. The budget provides only $1 million for this. Interestingly, the Conservation Council, in its 2003-04 budget submission, called for $33 million to enable retrofitting of all existing public housing stock. Also missing in the budget is the promised allocation of $5 million for energy audits of ACT schools. I know the government has also started looking at energy audits of some its high-energy use offices, and that is good, but we need to see the dollars allocated to actually do the work needed.
We were pleased to see ongoing funding to HEAT, which is the acronym for the Home Energy Advisory Team, and we were pleased about the extension of the water energy savings trial in ACT public housing. However, only very small pockets of money were involved. We also support the additional resources of $160,000 for monitoring of our ground water resources. This is welcome, but again it is a small pocket of money. We have to consider this in light of the fact that there are no additional resources for water-saving measures. In October 2003, the Institute for Sustainable Futures recommended that a strategy could be developed using low-cost water demand management measures, which would then defer the need to increase water supply for many years and allow time for further research. I have a reference for that. I think we should implement the full range of low-cost demand management measures proposed. This would reduce water use by 12,500 megalitres per annum at a total cost of $45.2 million or 30 cents per kilolitre. We should implement all of the low-cost measures now.
The dollars for the building sustainability index, BASIX, are welcome, although we question whether we need to examine the feasibility of the system. We know that it has just been introduced into New South Wales to operate from July and we know that
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