Page 2710 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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cannot afford to do it or it does not give us a return, we will not make the investment. This is about using our investment dollars wisely.
I congratulate the government on elevating the no waste by 2010 project to be an actual environment program so that the management of this project is actually, for the first time, in a recognisable environmental area. However, I think that there are still considerable failures in the area. Each year the government opens up the relevant section and looks under “initiatives”. This year is it territory and municipal services and it says “no waste by 2010”.
I will keep Mr Hargreaves happy. Every year I hope that the initiative is something to do with putrescible waste and, again, it is not. Every year it is not about putrescible waste. It is always called an initiative, but actually it is $300,000 or $400,000 to account for the fact that there are more houses in the ACT. Every year it becomes an environment initiative, a no waste initiative. There is a supplementation because there are more houses to pick up garbage from. There are no new initiatives in the no waste by 2010 project. There has been a signal failing over five years of this government to do anything about putrescible waste, which is 15 per cent of the waste stream.
The potential uses of putrescible waste are enormous. If we were innovative enough to do it, it could be converted for cogeneration or turned into biofuels, ethanol and a whole range of products that could at some stage actually return a benefit for the territory. The people who make money out of the environment and make the environment pay for itself are those people who are financially innovative. I encourage the minister, as Dr Foskey did, to look further afield than the advices that he is currently getting, because I am afraid that the advice is not very good. Every year we see the contract extension as the initiative in the no waste by 2010 program. Every year we fail to see any sort of program in relation to 15 per cent of the waste stream that could actually be an earner for this territory. At least, if it is not an earner, we could recoup the cost of waste collection.
Although I have been, I think, fulsome in my praise of the consolidation of land management and no waste—
Mr Hargreaves: I would not say “fulsome”.
MRS DUNNE: Yes, it was fulsome. I have to echo the words of caution that were raised by the environmental groups, the national parks association and the conservation council about the chain of command in the new department. I am particularly concerned that in areas that were once stand-alone areas, where heads of organisations answered almost directly to the minister, that chain of command is now significantly attenuated. That is particularly the case in areas that I am concerned with, whatever Environment ACT is now being called, and ACTION buses.
I thought it was particularly poignant in estimates, especially when we were quizzing the minister over ACTION buses, to find that the now departed head of ACTION buses, whom over the years that I have been a member of estimates committees I found to be capable, able, on the ball and able to answer questions, suddenly was so attenuated in the chain of command that he was not given an opportunity to answer. Three or four other people between him and the minister were answering the questions. I thought to myself, “Here is an able person who has made some real improvements in ACTION buses. I do
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