Page 741 - Week 02 - Thursday, 12 February 2009
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spending their money on ceiling insulation. I think that a bit more thought and creativity could have gone into that specific initiative.
In that context the whole package creates a number of missed opportunities for promoting a transition to a green economy. I refer to Senator Brown’s comments in the committee report which has just been tabled this morning where he has identified a number of missed opportunities. Some of the other investments that require much better government consideration, and I refer now to the Senate committee report, include expanding energy efficiency measures to cover other cost technologies. That is exactly the point I was just making. Another would be strengthening the incentives for landlords to invest in energy efficiency on behalf of tenants. There is clearly a major gap in the current programs that are available.
We need to see much bigger investments in public transport and other sustainable forms of transport. Why on earth are we not using this large amount of infrastructure money to start building the infrastructure that governments around the country have failed to invest in over the last decades to create truly useful public transport systems in this country? Again, I am not taking a particular shot at either side of this house but across this country both the old parties have failed to build the public transport infrastructure this country needs to be a 21st century country.
A further point that is made is ensuring infrastructure investment in schools complies with energy efficiency standards. Let us set our schools up for the future as well. The next point is to invest in research and development infrastructure to support the green industries of the future. Let us take an example in this town, Spark Solar. They want to build a facility that will be an industry of the future. They are struggling to get even a useful meeting with the ACT government. They have been trying for 18 months. They want to come to Canberra to build this sort of facility. We are going to lose this opportunity because other governments around the country are much more forward-thinking in saying, “We’ll support industries of the future to come to our place and create jobs for our children down the line.” The ACT government has sat back and said, “It’s not our problem.” What is their approach to building the green industries of the future? That is the question I put back to you, Chief Minister.
We need education and training to create the green collar workforce of the future. Some people are going to lose their jobs, both as a result of this current economic situation and as a result of the need for the economy to move away from carbon intensive industries. People are going to lose their jobs. Governments that were truly compassionate, governments that were really about protecting the workers, would be starting to create the industries of the future and the transition programs for those workers to have opportunities in the future, to have employment, to have strong self-esteem from being employed and being able to support their families.
We also need investment in renewable energy and the electricity grid infrastructure to make it possible to decentralise our energy systems, to have the clean, green energy of the future that we need. No government in Australia is making a serious investment in those technologies at the moment—
Mrs Dunne: You could have joined a government to do it, but you didn’t. You could have.
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