Page 719 - Week 02 - Thursday, 25 February 2010
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The next dot point is “implement more comprehensive measures to increase residential density in and around town and group centres, and along transport corridors”. Again, this is something the Greens support and have supported for a long time. In terms of making this a more sustainable city from an environmental point of view, it is important that we lessen the energy required in transportation.
In terms of making the city more sustainable from a more social point of view, it is also important to lessen the energy that is required in transport. People in Canberra are now spending a lot of time moving from one place to another. I have been talking to friends who say they are spending 45 minutes to drive to work. Only a few years ago you would have said you would have to live in Sydney or Melbourne to do those sorts of times. But, no, you can live in Canberra and do that.
We need to design our city so that there is good public transport and good active transport so people can walk, ride their bikes, catch a bus—and possibly in the future use light rail—so they can easily and conveniently, and cheaply for them and the environment, get to where they need to go. The statement about what could be described as transport-orientated development is one of the key mechanisms that this community needs to have to make better transport happen.
Mr Barr’s next dot point is “develop world best practice sustainable development demonstration projects such as the East Lake development”. That is a very good aim, but my question is: why is it only for demonstration projects such as the East Lake development? If it is good enough for East Lake, why is it not going to be good enough for all the developments in the ACT? I would like to see this change to develop world best practice sustainable development in all of the ACT’s development.
In this regard I particularly want to comment on the Molonglo development. I point out to Mr Barr and the chief planning executive that one of the items in the agreement between the Greens and that Labor Party was excellence in sustainable design for Molonglo. I would like to see this statement amended to explicitly include Molonglo, which is the next big area of urban development in the ACT. It needs to be something which we do better than we have in the past. It needs to be world best practice for sustainable development.
I note that the next couple of points are about water use—“further enhance stormwater harvesting in new estates” and “establish new approaches to water re-use in the Molonglo Valley development”. I note here, again, an item in the Greens-Labor Party agreement which talked precisely about this and the possibility of developing a third pipeline for reuse of water.
Looking at the last dot point, it is a bit strange to see—“continue to drive energy efficiencies in new and existing homes by phasing out electric storage hot water heaters for class 1 and class 2 buildings, consistent with the COAG national strategy on energy efficiency”. Mr Barr might remember that a little under a year ago I introduced legislation to do precisely what this dot point says. The Labor Party quite vehemently opposed the legislation at the time. It was finally passed in a heavily amended form with the support, which I welcomed, of the Liberal Party. The
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