Page 5257 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 18 November 2009

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urban forest back in place, to link communities, to give communities opportunity to cover denuded earth, to make sure that we got it right, that we undid some of the mistakes of the past. The criticisms are interesting. The forgetting of the record, I think, is sad. We will give you guys credit where credit is due. But let us not say that somehow the last eight years have been a paragon of virtue in regard to green issues in this Assembly, because they simply have not been. And the sad reality is that the job now will be so much harder because of the years of neglect.

I can remember Jon Stanhope coming in here—was it March last year?—and he suddenly said greenhouse was the biggest issue facing the people this century. It had taken him seven years to come to the conclusion there was actually a problem there. In those seven years we had the lost opportunity, the lost expertise, the people who left the public service and went to other jurisdictions or started up their own businesses.

There are a number of organisations through our R&D grants that were sponsored and assisted and funded to develop. Prime Water is an example; systems that ran biological purification of water rather than chemical. We have got one at Tidbinbilla and, oddly enough, the firm, wanted to set up one for the department of housing in Beijing. So there was an expert in industry. We saw sustainability industries as an opportunity. Yet we had the disgraceful episode here where Mr Hargreaves said, “I don’t understand it,” and Mr Stanhope basically said, “I don’t care”. That is the attitude of this government. Give Mr Corbell his due: he has taken up the cudgels in his new ministerial role. Good luck to you—I wish you well—because your enemy will probably be your own cabinet. The cabinet has not shown significant leadership on greenhouse gas issues for the last eight years.

Question put:

That Mr Seselja’s amendment be agreed to.

The Assembly voted—

Question so resolved in the negative.

MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (6.28), by leave, I move:

Omit all words after paragraph (1)(a), substitute:

“(b) ACT greenhouse gas emissions have increased by 25% since 1990 and our emissions are increasing at a faster rate than the national average;

(2) endorses the Government decision to legislate a greenhouse gas reduction target of the ACT being carbon neutral by 2060 and to legislate a target for the ACT’s emissions peaking in 2013;

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