Page 441 - Week 01 - Thursday, 11 December 2008
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I suppose I believe in small government. I have a little trepidation, in looking at this, to see that over this year and the outyears we have got essentially $9 million in bureaucracy. I go back and look at some of the environment initiatives that were touted in the run-up to the election by a range of parties and that $9 million would go a long way to implementing the policies in relation to energy efficiency in houses of people on low incomes. That is an awful lot of house insulation that we are not getting, and we are getting bureaucrats instead.
That $9 million is much more than any party in this place committed to land management, weed control and feral pest control. The Canberra Liberals made strong commitments to increasing the number of rangers, and that is practical, on-the-ground people, and there was capital works money to go with that so that they could do work in terms of land management, weed control, pest management and looking after our endangered native species.
I have a bit of trepidation about spending $9 million on a bureaucracy. I think it is worth reflecting that the alternative was the proposal put forward at the election by the Canberra Liberals to have an organisation called Climate Change Canberra, which would draw on the work done by the London Climate Change Agency. We spent some time in communication with that agency and we aimed to emulate the work that was done by it.
One of the aims was that Climate Change Canberra would become a self-funding organisation within a reasonable period of time, possibly 10 years, as is the case with the London Climate Change Agency. My concern is the Department of the Environment, Climate Change, Energy and Water will not become a self-funding organisation; it will continue to be a drain on the taxpayers. It will probably do good work but it will be doing work at a high level, attenuated policy level, and not practical work on the ground, which is where we need to see the changes to give us the environmental oomph that we need.
The constant approach of Labor parties across the country is: when in doubt, create another committee or another bureaucracy. It was something that we specifically avoided doing at the last election; we were not going to go out and create more boards and committees and more bureaucracies.
We have come here today and the Greens are saying that part of the Labor-Green accord is that we have got more bureaucracy. I think you will reap what you will sow. I agree that we needed to bring together and raise the profile of the work of environment in the ACT, which was severely attenuated over seven years by the Stanhope government, but that could have been done within a normal bureaucratic structure so that we do not have to go out and find new ministerial liaison people, new people to write ministerials, new people to do HR.
None of those people, with all due respect to those people and the work that they do, will do anything to lower our greenhouse gas emissions, to save or to avoid erosion or to do away with one pest plant or animal in the ACT. They will do good work in their area but it is not practical work and it is not practical work that will be immediately effective for the environment of the ACT.
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