Page 268 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 7 March 2007
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MR MULCAHY: I have never met him, I have never laid eyes on him and I am very happy—
Mr Hargreaves: Were you with them when the AHA was a client?
MR MULCAHY: I am very happy that I was not at any lunch with Mr Burke. But let me go back to the topic in question, the amendment. I say that without hesitation. At the local level, though, Mr Smyth detailed some of the initiatives taken when he was the minister. It is important that actions are the feature of policy in this area, rather than rhetoric. I have heard about the New Zealand initiatives and I have heard Dr Brown. The first time I saw him he was sitting on Mount Wellington in an igloo in 1976, protesting because the Americans had a warship in Hobart—a nuclear-powered warship. They said they wanted it to park a few hundred metres down the river in case the nuclear bombs went off: it would be safer down there and it would not affect the city. Interesting science! I think he should stick to general practice and not go in for nuclear science.
I have heard Dr Brown’s rantings for the past 31 years. Good luck to him. What you need in these areas of environmental management are applied measures along the lines that Mr Smyth pointed out—actually getting on with the job, understanding and working with the community to try and reduce energy waste and things such as smoke issues, particularly out in the Tuggeranong Valley. For that reason, we on this side are anxious to hear what the government’s greenhouse strategy will be all about. It is all very well to criticise—
Mr Corbell: Climate change—climate change strategy.
MR MULCAHY: Climate change strategy—so be it. The fact of the matter is that this side was criticised; we were told that the earlier plans of the Liberals were too ambitious, too costly. If you are going to knock something down, you have to have something to replace it with. We have been sitting waiting patiently, and “soon” has become quite a long time. I was sweating to see this wonderful document at Christmas. Christmas came and went, and we still have not seen it. I am hoping that we might see it by Easter, but I would not be holding my breath. We will see what happens in terms of the tangibles there—what the answers are for the territory. I hope that in these programs we have applied measures that are realistic and—rather than being measures that are anchored in rhetoric and ideology, that deal with global approaches—take the issue back to how this can work in the Australian Capital Territory.
I hope that the minister will have that approach. We will be looking to support things that we think are sensible and for the betterment of this territory and the community in which we live. I do not think the environment is an area that can be monopolised by those who call themselves activists. We all have an interest in the environment, for our subsequent generations. It has been politically a populist issue since about the 1970s, with the Franklin Dam movement and so forth, but I speak to many people who went bushwalking 30, 40 or 50 years ago and who take offence at assertions that they are not part of the environment movement and who take offence when they are dismissed as people without a view of the environment. This is an area in which we all have ownership: we are entitled to have ownership and we all should have
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