Page 3785 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 27 August 2008
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However, there is no guarding against environmental degradation. That is one area in which any amount of wealth will not assist any person. We all breathe air, we all drink water and, even if one can create the ideal little snow-scape environment, it will be a bubble out of which people will not be able to move. I suppose, for those of us who are not among them, there is some small satisfaction in the fact that huge wealth will not save anybody from the disasters of climate change, rising seas, biodiversity loss, peak oil and all those things that we know are coming.
I guess that what is amazing to me is that we know all this is happening and yet we are running on “business as usual”. It is pretty incredible, is it not? It is a bit like saying, “But how can those people live on the San Andreas fault in California when they know there is going to be a massive earthquake there one day?” But people go on with their lives; they pretend it is not happening.
There is a huge amount of denial on climate change. One can understand that, because it could well be the end of life as we know it on this planet, and it is high time that we pulled our finger out. For that reason, people do look to governments. Governments provide the policy setting in which they, as individuals, can act. Individuals can replace their light globes; they can get a Prius or get rid of their car altogether or move down to one car, as I know some families are doing. But in the end, if there is not an alternative to driving that car, for instance, they cannot make that change. As it happens, most people do need to go to work; children do need to go to school; and, indeed, we would want it so.
The government has a very serious role. There is growing and very large literature on litigation, realising that governments may in fact be responsible, in years to come, for instance, for developing land that is going to be subject to ocean rise, an issue that is affecting the coast. I guess this is one area where we are glad we are up in the high country.
There are some disappointments for me and for the Greens since coming to this Assembly. I remember that, just before the election, the government—or, as it was, a party seeking re-election at that time—issued a pamphlet which indicated what it was planning to do on the environment. I think a lot of people believed that stuff. They said: “Okay, we have just had a federal election. Gee, the Libs got in there; let’s put in Labor here at the ACT level. Look what they’re going to do for the environment.” Unfortunately, they have been disappointed. I hope they have kept their eye on the ball.
We had the Chief Minister’s speech in December 2004, when, as environment minister, part of his speech was devoted to the lead he was going to take in sustainability. He bragged that the government had not shirked its responsibilities or shied away from that task. At that time, the Office of Sustainability was the government’s centrepiece and the Chief Minister boasted that it would be in the Chief Minister’s Department and made responsible for greenhouse, water and energy policy, taking a whole-of-government focus. That, indeed, is exactly what we need if we are really going to tackle these issues.
Unfortunately, it did not last. With that functional review in 2006, we saw the Office of Sustainability moved to TAMS. Then, unfortunately, we found that it was not
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