Page 3105 - Week 08 - Thursday, 25 June 2009
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four years for the switch your thinking program, which deals with rebates, incentive programs, information dissemination and guidance on environmental efficiencies at household level. This, Mr Speaker, as you have rightly pointed out, covers both energy and water use. Like you, the Liberal opposition and I are concerned that, while is a good-intentioned program, the government is spreading its resources too thinly by trying to cover too many bases.
I noted during the election campaign when the government announced the basis of this policy, which seemed to be in response to the Canberra Liberals rollout of a policy that provided home insulation for those who needed it and also water tune-up initiatives aimed at low income people, that their policy was a poor imitation of ours; it was aimed at a catch-up. We looked very carefully at the sorts of things that we should roll out and we tried to provide best bang for our buck. We came up with the water rebate and the rebate for installation of home insulation because that was going to give people the best capacity to reduce their water and energy consumption and also had the add-on benefit of improving the quality of their housing in so doing and increase their long-term energy security.
I think that over time if we do manage to have improved accountability indicators and if the government really is serious about having effective policy in this area we will see a gradual shift to something which is more effective than dissipating our efforts in a whole range of tiny little programs, where I think you just do not get your bang for your buck. It is a perennial besetting problem of public policy that there are so many demands on you for an initiative here and an initiative there that you feel that you are assuaging everybody by having a little program. Sometimes it is just better to bite the bullet and say, “No, we will concentrate on an area where we know that we will get a much better result.” Had the government been disciplined and concentrated its efforts on a real water tune-up program and an effective insulation program, I think you would get much more bang for your buck.
I noted with interest the minister’s confirmation given in the estimates hearings of the change in the government’s policy in relation to water tanks. Rebates will now again be available for tanks with internal connections as well as tanks with no internal connections. This is probably a good policy. I have put on the record my views that tank rebates are probably not necessarily the best way to go in an inland city like Canberra, that there are many other efficiencies that we could put in place. Given that the water that is collected in tanks normally runs down the river to other users downstream, we have to look at the unintended consequences of wholesale rolling out of tanks in the ACT. It is not like doing it in a coastal town or city.
I cannot let the opportunity go past without commenting on the government’s final agreement, after eight years, to deal with Canberra’s water future. After years of denial, mainly by the Chief Minister, we have finally had agreement that there will be a dam, potentially costing the ACT taxpayers more than twice what it would have cost had they got on and done it early in the piece.
The Stanhope government has substantially abandoned the no waste by 2010 project, renaming it the no waste to landfill and calling it an aspirational target. I note that there is money in the budget for this minister to review the policies and I am looking
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