Page 3999 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 12 December 2006
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months ago was at least vegetated. It had been replanted by ACT Forests after the 2001 bushfires. It was vegetated. It may not have been the Chief Minister’s idea of how that piece of land should look, but at least there were plants growing on it, there was grass growing on it and the dust was suppressed. But, courtesy of the Chief Minister’s international arboretum and folly, a large part of that area has now been scalped. There is no dust suppression in the area. This piece of landscaping courtesy of Jon Stanhope is a scar on a landscape which has already been ruined by fires over successive seasons.
Let’s look at what our colleagues have been doing while the Stanhope government has been talking and not doing anything. There has been a great deal of criticism of the federal government for not signing the Kyoto protocol. Let’s see what the commonwealth has done. In fact, Australia remains on track to meet its Kyoto target of reducing greenhouse emissions to 108 per cent of their 1990 levels by 2010. How has this been achieved? It has been achieved because we have developed a strong economy. Good economic management has allowed a thriving economy to develop, an economy which can fund important areas such as the environment. Let’s not make any mistake about it: we can speak all that we like about how important it is to make changes for the environment, but if we do not have the money it is just empty rhetoric to do so. If we do not have a strong economy, it is just empty rhetoric.
From time to time, people in this place and elsewhere talk about triple bottom line accounting, but when it comes to making sound decisions for the environment they have to be also sound economic decisions or people will not make them. This is what we see with the innovations of far-sighted, economically driven environmental think tanks like the Rocky Mountains Institute. We are actually seeing people making inroads into the environment—into reducing greenhouse gas emissions; into reducing energy consumption; into reducing fossil fuel consumption—by making sound economic decisions so that you bring on board not just the mums and dads who want to reduce their power bill, but the large companies.
Look at what large—boo, hiss—companies such as Wal-Mart in the United States have been able to do. Wal-Mart, because of their environmental activities in reducing their dependence on fossil fuel, have changed the trucking industry so significantly in the United States that we are now seeing a reduction of close to 10 per cent in the use of fossil fuels in the trucking industry in the United States. That is happening because of the intervention of one large company. People like to say that Wal-Mart is a dreadful organisation. I do not have a view on that one way or the other, but when it comes to environmental action they have got the runs on the board when people like the Stanhope government are just talking about it.
Without the strong economy that we have in Australia at the moment, we would not be on track to meet our 1999 emissions target. In fact, these emissions would be 123 per cent of their 1990 levels rather than the 108 per cent which we have planned. Responsible economic management will allow the Australian government to deal with the increasing difficulty of securing long-term water supplies for many parts of Australia as well.
It was interesting to see just this week the Chief Minister suddenly becoming interested again in dams. It is an on-again, off-again situation with the Chief Minister.
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