Page 3605 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 21 November 2007
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Mr Stefaniak: I point Mr Gentleman to the website where he can see it all.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (11.44): Thank you very much, members, for your contribution. I will just take you back to the motion and talk through it again. My motion was in no way an attack on the climate change strategy; I just want to put that on the table. I do not expect members to listen avidly to everything I say but I guess if you are going to talk about it it does help. I am sorry that what I said has gathered the ire of the Chief Minister. The reason I think the sustainability legislation is important to the implementation of any climate change strategy is that it has become absolutely clear that we are facing something that is going to require a change in the way we do things, and that is why I had in my speech that point that perhaps government is scared of doing so.
We know governments are scared of doing it; we know it because everything points to the coal industry as a real problem and yet we have got an Australian economy that is based partly on exports of coal. So these are not easy matters, and it is a great disappointment that we do not talk them through and come to a solution. We all want the same solution; we want a world that will be here for our many generations of descendants. We are all on about the same thing, so to spray at each other across the chamber is hardly conducive to achieving a solution.
That is why I believe sustainability legislation is important. The climate action plan is 43 actions. Sustainability legislation is about embedding processes into the way things are done—it is separate, it is different and it is necessary because it means that the government itself can make sure that it is not contributing to the problem. I have pursued this all the way through the time I have been in the Assembly, and my predecessors did it beforehand. The Australian Greens have very, very extensive strategies on climate change, which the ACT Greens will be drawing on when we come up with our—
Mr Hargreaves: Are they costed?
DR FOSKEY: Yes, they are, Mr Hargreaves. I draw everyone’s attention to that, but we are actually here to debate sustainability legislation. If the Greens were in government we would be in a position, as the government is, to respond to the community’s desire for a climate change strategy, as the government did, after quite a considerable delay, which was also noticed by the community.
That is the reason why sustainability legislation is important. The other reason is that the government actually made a commitment to produce it. No-one has talked about that, but it was an election promise and, if I am drawing the government’s attention to a promise that it has made and there is no public indication that it has fulfilled it, I think that deserves serious consideration.
Paragraph (4) of Mr Stanhope’s amendment to my motion suggests that the government is still going to go ahead with some legislation. Instead of sustainability legislation called for in my motion, the amendment mentions “the scope of legislative change”. Optimistically, I would hope that that is what that means. Incorporating
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