Page 4004 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 15 Sept 2009
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the adjournment debate about the fraudulent Facebook site that was established, purporting to be me. I have tabled a picture of an individual who I think might be behind the site and asked for the Liberal Party to investigate whether he is a member of the Liberal Party and to respond in this place, as they refuse to participate in this in any other forum; in fact, they refuse to participate in this in here.
In some of the interjections we have had in this place through question time it became clear that perhaps a name was not being given to me for threat that I would sue that individual for setting up the fraudulent Facebook site. I would like to address that. I am happy for the individual’s name not to be provided to me but I am very keen to find out whether the Liberal Party, or a Liberal Party member, was behind that fraudulent site. We have had the Leader of the Opposition, and indeed other members of the opposition, deny that the Liberal Party were behind it.
I guess I am changing my question. If you do not want to expose the individual’s name, I accept that. But I am very interested to have it confirmed that that individual is not known to the Leader of the Opposition or any MLA in this place and is not a member of the Liberal Party. That is a pretty simple request and if that could be answered during this sitting week I would greatly appreciate it. I will let the matter rest at that point, but until then I will come in every sitting period and raise this in the adjournment debate until my questions are answered.
Switch to Green conference
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (4.48): Late last week I signed myself up for and attended the Switch to Green conference, hosted by the United Nations Association of Australia, held just down the road at the National Convention Centre. This was a two-day conference, with an attached expo with a range of exhibitors. It was a very useful day and a half that we spent there, with a range of interesting presentations and discussions as part of the conference.
I guess it canvassed a number of themes, and one was answers. The expo, with the number of exhibitors there, demonstrated a large range of technologies and practical things that are available right now, ready to go, to help us to address the issues of climate change, and in the presentations in the seminars some of those technologies were talked about.
There were a lot of practical ideas on display and being talked about. My favourite probably was the simple notion that showering for two minutes is the equivalent of having a 60-watt light bulb running for 12-hours just switched on and left there. We were being implored to think about doing practical things like showering for two minutes less, and the simplicity of it was very appealing.
My favourite quote of the entire two days was from an official from the federal department of the environment, who simply observed that the cheapest and cleanest power station is the one that is never built. He made this observation—I know you, Madam Assistant Speaker Burch, were there at the time—in the context of simply saying that energy efficiency is such a key answer to climate change. Again, the simplicity of that idea was one that demonstrated that if we want to act seriously on climate change there are a lot of great ideas out there.
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