Page 440 - Week 01 - Thursday, 11 December 2008
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Another issue that has been raised today that I would like to briefly touch on, as it will directly concern the new department, is the real prospect that the ACT will very soon become the leading jurisdiction in reducing greenhouse gas emissions once we legislate for a real and useful target in this place. Should the commonwealth fall behind us and the emissions trading scheme being developed by the commonwealth not prove to be as comprehensive as it should be, it is essential that we still make a significant contribution to reducing greenhouse emissions here in the ACT. This will take much work within the new department, to both develop effective options for the commonwealth scheme as well as ways of integrating ACT initiatives into any such scheme and vice versa.
As Minister Corbell rightly pointed out this morning, there are a great number of benefits in the ACT leading the way to go beyond just numbers of reductions, though this is obviously the ultimate ambition. I think it will be important that the ACT takes a leadership stance at COAG and that this department provide our ministers with the necessary tools, the necessary arguments and the necessary ideas so that then it is upon the ministers to show the political will in COAG to stand up and make a difference and for the ACT to be the leader that it should be.
As I said at the outset of my contribution, the creation of the new department is an exciting time for the territory. I would like to take this opportunity to wish all the new staff who join this department all the best as they set out on the implementation of what are vital policy measures and programs to reduce the ACT’s greenhouse emissions.
MR COE (Ginninderra) (10.08): I have got a question about the relocation and fit-out costs of the new environment, climate change, energy and water department. We just heard from the education minister that, because staff went from Tuggeranong to Macarthur House and then to 220 Northbourne because of the fit-out that occurred a year ago at Macarthur House, the new department could move into new accommodation that was built a year ago at the cost of the department of education; therefore, the cost of moving the department should be quite low. I was just wondering why there is a $100,000 fit-out and relocation cost for the new department, given they are moving into Macarthur House which was fitted out a year ago.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (10.09): I want to touch on some of these issues and to give a little warning. Everyone, including Mr Rattenbury, the Speaker, has waxed lyrical about the importance of the creation of the department. I am personally a little sceptical about how a bureaucracy is going to advance our participation in environment and climate change issues.
Like Dr Foskey in the previous Assembly, I was critical of the attenuation and dissipation of the environment organisation that, through the successive years of the Stanhope government, had been spread out across a number of departments and then sort of brought back together but in an attenuated way. In the process the Stanhope government had abolished the institution which was created by Gary Humphries, which was Environment ACT. That was the first time that all the environment agencies in the ACT had been brought together and that work had been substantially undone by the Stanhope government over seven years.
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