Page 3596 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 21 November 2007
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South Australia, where sustainability is written into the planning act. We want to see sustainability legislation integrated, complementary and developed from a whole-of-government perspective. Planning and development are key areas which need improvement in the area of sustainability.
The conservation council was hoping that this would be the first comprehensive sustainability legislation in Australia. I do not care about being first, but I want to make every effort to ensure that we are not the last. It is possible to introduce simple, applicable legislation to improve sustainability in the ACT. We should do it fast. I would like to have future generations thanking us rather than damning us.
To reiterate the motion, we would like to see the government’s sustainability legislation discussion paper from 2005—we presume that there is one; that the Office of Sustainability was doing something—and we would like it to be available for full public consultation. The Greens believe in involving experts. We never know who the experts are until we ask for input. We would also like to see a time line for comment, public meetings and the tabling and debating of the legislation.
As we all know, the next ACT election is just around the corner. It would be a shame to miss the opportunity to implement this during this Assembly and it would be embarrassing for the ALP to have to announce it again as another election promise.
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Business and Economic Development, Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Minister for the Environment, Water and Climate Change, Minister for the Arts) (11.18): I regret that Dr Foskey, on behalf of the Greens, did not take the opportunity to table their climate change strategy and expose the embarrassment of not having one. It always strikes me as remarkable that the party that comes into this place and pontificates, moralises and postures on climate change, the environment and sustainability does not actually have a climate change strategy.
In the last three years, I cannot recall a single achievement for the Greens in relation to the environment—in fact, in relation to anything. What has Dr Foskey achieved in three years in the Legislative Assembly? In the context of the next election, a subject which Dr Foskey brings up in her presentation, and any embarrassment that the Labor Party might feel in relation to its achievements, one might reflect on what the Greens’ election campaign next year will look like in terms of their list of achievements. No sustainability policy—no policies at all. No climate change strategy. Essentially no achievements on anything.
Yet we have the pontification, the moralising and the spite that we have just heard again—that the Labor Party, the government, does not understand sustainability and that, if only the ACT government would take advice from experts, it might get some understanding of the significance or importance of sustainability or even an understanding of the meaning of sustainability.
The depth of patronising and, frankly, offensive moralising by the Greens on these issues when they have absolutely no track record—in fact, not a policy! I invited Dr Foskey to table their climate change strategy. The reason she did not is that they do
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