Page 814 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 2 May 2007
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were the national capital, with a leadership role. The greenhouse gas abatement scheme is a case in point. It was implemented in 2003 by the New South Wales government but it was not until 2005 that Mr Stanhope’s crew jumped aboard. Even now, much of the management of this scheme is conducted in New South Wales and not in the ACT.
Similarly, this motion puts pressure on the commonwealth government to lead the way in establishing a wide-ranging emissions trading scheme, something that was recommended by the National Emissions Trading Taskforce in 2006. Why do we need another inquiry and another report? We have already been told we need to do this. Presumably, having thrown their weight behind this, Mr Stanhope and his government can now just throw their hands up and say, “It is not our fault nothing is happening. It is up to the federal government.” This is not good enough. This government should be doing more to entrench emissions trading schemes, rather than just parroting the recommendations from the task force’s report.
They could start by strengthening the ACT’s own greenhouse gas abatement scheme. As I am sure you are all aware, the scheme establishes annual greenhouse gas targets and requires companies that produce greenhouse gases, principally electricity companies, to meet mandatory benchmarks as to the amount of emissions they reduce. In 2005, the benchmark was 7.96 tonnes per capita. In 2007, it was reduced to 7.27 tonnes per capita. That is a small but important decrease that forced producers to work harder at cutting emissions. But with the scheme set to run until 2012, there do not seem to be any plans to drop the benchmark targets any further, which effectively means that ACT industry has already done all it has to do for the next five years to address emissions. Does this seem like the policy of a government that seriously wants to address emissions?
The European experience has shown that a carbon emissions market can actually lead to increased emissions unless targets are set low enough—descending targets—to produce an overall reduction in greenhouse gases. There should be a timetable by which these benchmarks are made progressively lower each year, rather than being allowed to plateau at a level that looks impressive but does not change much.
The government is lagging on its climate change strategy. Every question I have asked the government about its research into how greenhouse gases and climate change will affect the ACT reveals that they have done no research whatever. I commend the federal Labor government for commissioning its version of the Stern report. We badly need it.
If we are really serious about an emissions trading scheme, why not do what many governments have done in Australia? Melbourne has just made itself a zero emissions precinct. In our own municipality, in Farrer, people got together, because the government was not doing anything, and agreed to work towards being a zero emissions suburb.
Why not join the 494 local and provincial governments in America that got so sick of their federal government not signing the Kyoto protocol, not doing anything, that they said, “Together we have the power”? Why cannot the state and territory governments—all of them Labor and all of them talking about their concern for
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