Page 1586 - Week 06 - Thursday, 7 June 2007
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There are groups who feel their sector was overlooked: tourism, for instance, and the community sports area. There is not much for music, again, but some bits of the arts did all right. Indigenous people got the big ticket item of a mini ATSIC, and there are some dollars to protect Canberra’s children at risk while they are still toddlers. While there is not something for everybody, generally speaking the benefits go to the right people, the ones who need it most. It is a well-meaning budget, and I give the government and its officials credit for the work and the thought that went into it. I also acknowledge the business and community members whose ideas have informed the budget.
But as a Greens representative, it is my job to look at the budget through a Green lens. That is a multifaceted prism, but at the outset it seeks to answer questions about the budget such as: first, how does it further the goals of sustainability and social equity? Second, what evidence is there that triple bottom line thinking has been applied? Third, does it further the visions for Canberra set out in the spatial and social plans, and assisted by the sustainable transport plan, all of which are the result of expert advice and extensive community consultation? Fourth, have the needs of our most vulnerable been taken into account? And, fifth, what is its environmental impact?
This year I have added climate change to that lens, because it is an overarching concern of Canberra’s people. Last night I attended a meeting in Chapman with 100 other people who wanted to find out how they could proof their houses against climate change. Mr Gentleman’s proposal for legislation to encourage people to feed the electricity grid with solar power was received with excitement—and, may I say, a sense of hope—as were the many ideas that Janis Birkeland suggested for retrofitting houses and for building houses which actually improve our environmental amenity and physical health, not just ameliorate it.
A meeting of similar numbers in Farrer recently decided to work together to make their suburb carbon neutral. The See Change movement, which now has groups all over Canberra, is giving people the sense that they have the power to make their future far more optimistic than it seems at present. Canberra people are way ahead of their governments in acting to mitigate climate change. A climate change strategy will be very welcome indeed, but from now on every item in every budget produced in this place should pass the climate change test.
And now to the detail: first, environment and climate change. If last year’s budget was the time for making the tough financial decisions, as we were told, then this year’s budget is the time for making tough environmental decisions. The baby steps which are taken with this budget pay lip-service to the serious threats posed by climate change and the drought, but the fact that they are uncoordinated, piecemeal and relatively minor indicates that the government still does not believe its own rhetoric and does not really understand the seriousness of the situation. This is a business as usual budget.
I note that the Commissioner for the Environment has been asking for more funds ever since I have been in this place, did not receive them, and this year the commissioner has the added task of producing the state of the ACT environment report on minimal resources. I note, too, that the Office of Sustainability have more
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