Page 3919 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 15 Sept 2009
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thank the secretary, Ms Cullen, for the excellent work that she does on all the work that the PAC has to get through.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Climate Change, Environment and Water—Standing Committee
Report 2
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Convenor, ACT Greens) (10.33): I present the following report:
Climate Change, Environment and Water—Standing Committee—Report 2—Inquiry into ACT Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets—Interim report—September 2009, dated 9 September 2009, including additional comments (Mr Seselja), together with a copy of the extracts of the relevant minutes of proceedings.
I move:
That the report be noted.
Before I comment on the report, I would like to thank my committee colleagues, Ms Porter and Mr Seselja; the staff of the Committee Office, including the committee secretary, Hanna Jaireth, and Rachel Lee, who assisted the inquiry secretary; Chiew Yee Lim from the library; and Lydia Chung.
This was a challenging report with substantial terms of reference. Climate change is well known as a wicked policy problem. I take the liberty of quoting Professor Ross Garnaut, who was commissioned by all state and territory governments to advise on climate change. In April 2008, he addressed a climate change and social justice conference at the University of Melbourne, noting climate change as a wicked policy problem. He said:
Wicked problems are hard to define so that people have different ideas on the nature of the problem. They have many interdependencies and multiple causes that interact. Wicked problems don’t just keep still. They interact and evolve in a dynamic social context. New forms of wicked problems emerge, while one is seeking to understand and solve the original version. Or the solution leads to new, unintended consequences.
All members of the committee were confronted and challenged by the wicked nature of the policy parameters of climate change, and we certainly talked about these issues and their complexities. Nonetheless, while the issue is broad and the issues raised before the committee covered a wide spectrum, our key task was to determine appropriate targets to be set into future ACT legislation to reduce our ACT greenhouse gas emissions, as well as associated monitoring, reporting requirements to accompany those targets. We were also looking at the triple bottom line, the social, environmental and economic impacts of any proposed targets, and other issues.
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