Page 3054 - Week 08 - Thursday, 7 August 2008
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5,600 new lights will be installed this year in addition to the 1,713 replaced in 2007. One of the centrepieces of our efforts has been the creation of a world-leading feed-in tariff.
The commissioner has put forward a range of constructive suggestions about how we may continue to improve our environmental performance. The government will now work with the commissioner and other stakeholders on strategies for their implementation. Part of this response will be the establishment of community conversations about the challenges we face. The government welcomes this approach. It complements our own processes in improving consultation and community engagement, and we know that sustainability is regarded by our citizens as a matter of great importance. We look forward to this process.
I formally table, Mr Speaker, the Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment’s Australian Capital Territory state of the environment report 2007-08. I commend the report to the Assembly.
Independent Competition and Regulatory Commission
Paper and statement by minister
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): For the information of members, I present the following paper:
Independent Competition and Regulatory Commission—Report 3 of 2008—ACT Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme—Compliance and operation of the Scheme for the 2007 compliance year, dated June 2008.
I ask leave to make a statement in relation to the ICRC report.
Leave granted.
MR STANHOPE: Mr Speaker, I table today the third annual report of the operation of the ACT greenhouse gas abatement scheme for the 2007 compliance year. In the recently released Garnaut climate change review draft report, Professor Garnaut said:
Climate change is a diabolical policy problem. It is uncertain in its form and extent, rather than immediate, in both its impacts and its remedies.
The challenges posed by climate change affect everyone around the world and require concerted action if we are to avoid critical environmental, economic and social consequences. Rising greenhouse emissions pose a significant threat to the social, environmental and economic welfare of ACT citizens, present and future. The ACT is a small contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions—we are responsible for about one per cent of Australia’s emissions and Australia contributes about one per cent of global emissions. The ACT may have the smallest emissions as a jurisdiction in Australia, but we must still join with our fellow Australians to address this global problem.
The Garnaut review emphasised the fact that effective international action is necessary if the risks of dangerous climate change are to be held to acceptable levels.
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