Page 5258 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 18 November 2009
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(3) notes the Government has announced its intent to set a medium-term greenhouse gas reduction target in the range of 25% to 40% by 2020 in the first half of 2010 and this will be included in the proposed greenhouse gas reduction targets legislation;
(4) acknowledges that, despite being a small jurisdiction, the ACT’s actions to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions at a local level are an essential contribution to taking action on climate change;
(5) acknowledges the associated benefits from legislating a target include increased investment in the green business sector and financial savings from increased energy efficiency; and
(6) calls on the Government to:
(a) include a renewable energy target of at least 15% by 2012 and 25% by 2020 in the ACT energy policy;
(b) release a final energy policy for the ACT by mid-2010; and
(c) amend the Electricity Feed-in (Renewable Energy Premium) Act 2008 to include installations larger than 30kW as soon as possible in 2010.”.
The amendment seeks to add some clarity and certainty to what we believe is the intent of Ms Porter’s motion. I do appreciate that Ms Porter brought the motion on, because it has been very valuable to be able to have this debate today. Our amendment seeks to put on the table some key dates by when we think the government needs to deliver on climate and energy policy. In essence, we are seeking to put some meat on the motion and avoid it being what it might otherwise be.
Mr Barr: Which is?
MR RATTENBURY: I am trying to be polite. I would like to acknowledge some frustration here.
While the committee process and the establishment of legislated targets are on track, there is no doubt that the ACT government have been slow to deliver on an energy policy—very slow, in fact. In 2006 they released an energy policy consultation paper, and then it appeared to fall into a hole. We in the Greens had expected to see a draft policy in December last year, but we did not. I have been informed by the minister that work on a draft policy has been progressing well more recently, and he has committed to releasing that draft policy before the end of this year. We cannot imagine that now a finer policy will emerge or even should be produced before the middle of 2010, given that public consultation is going to be a very important stage. But we absolutely do not want to see the time line for an energy policy blow-out any further than the substantial blow-out we have already seen.
Just in terms of the couple of specifics of my amendment, one is to change the baseline from 2000 to 1990. As we now have seen in the government response, 1990 will be the baseline on which the legislated target will be based, and it is also the
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