Page 3797 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 18 October 2005
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sustainability indicators, then we need to ensure that the governing boards understand what social environmental impact the agencies might have.
It does not require a certain expert or a person with a particular skill set to be appointed to a governing board; nor does it require every member of that board to have the capacity to assess the social and environmental impact of their agency’s actions. As the Treasurer stated at the in-principle stage of this debate, it merely requires that the minister try to ensure that, between them all, the board members understand and have some insight into those impacts.
The reverse argument is that environmental and social outcomes ought to be a consequence of regulation while boards are required only to be responsible for the financial management, for returning a profit. Such an approach demonstrates either an ignorance of the philosophy that underlies the triple bottom line approach to economic activity or an intentional misrepresentation of it. Government can, and should, regulate for social environmental outcomes, but the governing boards of all agencies need to understand how and why the performance indicators they adopt that measure our move towards social and environmental sustainability are shaped as they are.
Yes, this could be a challenging exercise, but to choose not to require boards to have the necessary insight in developing governance that can take account of environmental and social impact is irresponsible. Indeed, I think it is fair enough to say that most Canberra people like me would like to be sure that the governing boards of Australian Capital Tourism, the Canberra Institute of Technology, the Cultural Facilities Corporation, ACTTAB and ACTION, to name but a few, have the capacity to understand the impacts of their agencies and so would have the skills and enthusiasm to oversee the implementation of innovative sustainability indicators and triple bottom line reporting.
I understand that the government is not inclined to support this amendment. I understand from the Treasurer’s in-principle speech that he is concerned that an organisation’s direction can be skewed if everything it does is required to be looked at through a particular prism. I agree, of course, and I am arguing here, as many have argued before me, that the financial prism is the most typical example in our society and that the damage that has been caused by organisations that choose to view their responsibilities only through that prism is appreciable. Indeed, it is in response to the limited vision that is enabled by looking through the financial prism that the whole concept of triple bottom line accounting has gained such momentum. The financial prism allows a look at only one facet of the impacts of government policy and budgetary decisions.
The Treasurer has asked members to feed into the process of developing sustainability indicators and seems to expect the Greens to make strong contributions to the budget reporting process on these matters. We have made a commitment to provide some feedback in the next couple of weeks, and I thank him for the opportunity. But, of course, it will not and cannot be the Greens alone, with one MLA, that shift the ACT government to sustainability.
The Chief Minister was in the paper only yesterday extolling the potential for the ACT to lead the way in environmentally sustainable development. The government’s Canberra plan, which is built on a social plan, a spatial plan and an economic white paper, that is, the three aspects of the sustainability prism, at its heart would seem to aspire to a triple
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