Page 1401 - Week 04 - Thursday, 26 March 2009
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upgrades with investment and buildings and the facilities that are used to provide services to our community.
The aim, as I understand it, is to issue support to local tradespeople by providing some certainty and confidence within the construction industry. So when businesses are projecting over the next 12 months and making decisions regarding staffing, this will allow them some room to save jobs on the front line, at least in the short term. The Greens support measures that endeavour to keep as many Canberrans in work as possible and urge the government to continue to address emerging concerns within those industries that are immediately affected by the financial crisis.
An ongoing and robust connection can be maintained with local businesses through such initiatives as item 7.2 of the parliamentary agreement, which stipulates that a small business roundtable will be established in 2009. The Greens were pleased to see some very modest progress has been made on the Labor-Greens agreement in this particular appropriation bill, as funds have been assigned for stormwater and footpath upgrades, insulation and building modifications to increase the energy efficiency of community and childcare facilities and the initiative to provide 10 blocks of land which will deliver dwellings with tailored support to enable families to sustain longer-term tenancies in mainstream public housing.
While these capital projects will deliver a short-term injection to the ACT economy, the Greens will be anticipating that the next appropriation of funds will provide services and support in addition to the construction of dwellings as a key element in any strategy to move people out of homelessness and to include funding to stormwater augmentation to address another 40 at-risk sites. Within this current climate of financial crisis, the Greens will be invoking confidence in the people of the ACT by providing solutions to building an economy in the future that is sustainable, both economically and environmentally.
There are minor capital works in this package, which are green projects that quickly create green jobs in the industry by retrofitting energy inefficient homes. However, the Greens will be advocating a much more durable approach—the building of a green-collar workforce for the future, which will lead to long-term prosperity while protecting our environment.
The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, told world business leaders at the Davos World Economic Forum in February that the current economic crisis:
… presents us with a gilt-edged opportunity. By tackling climate change head on, we can solve many of our current problems, including the threat of global recession.
President Obama has also echoed these sentiments by promising a green jobs package to create five million jobs in green sectors, as he believes that it makes sense to use this crisis to start the long, hard process of making economies more sustainable. We can only take our cue from governments around the world that we should be carefully fostering green industries and sound infrastructure investments and also look to local advice.
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