Page 2177 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 22 June 2010
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Mr Hargreaves interjecting—
MS LE COUTEUR: They are, Mr Hargreaves. If you go there, you will find that they are using some of the old stock. Do you think that even in 10 years time or 50 years time in Canberra we will be using the same buses we have now? I fear that we will not be. We need to have more of this long-term analysis. That is what this plan is lacking.
I now move to climate impact analysis. The government says that it is in the process of developing a tool, but page 9 of the infrastructure plan says:
The potential and expected impacts of climate change need to be factored into decision making regarding infrastructure in the future. It is important that climate change risks, along with other risks, are incorporated into standard risk management frameworks and routine decision-making processes.
The Government will be looking at this over the next year in the context of implementing Weathering the Change Action Plan 2.
That is all very fine, but they have not done it yet and they are doing infrastructure planning. This is particularly disturbing when you consider how little of the first weathering the change plan was implemented. And, unfortunately, many of the key documents which are going to back the government’s approach to infrastructure and climate change have yet to be released. There will be a sustainable transport action plan and a sustainable energy policy.
I am running out of time to talk about all of the things I would like to talk about, but I will just note a few. With health, we are really concerned about delays in the health-related capital asset program. And we would like to see the young persons mental health unit completed; there is no timetable or budget for this as yet. The secure mental health facilities and the women and children’s hospital, again, need a commitment to a time line and funding. Let me go to education. Earlier today we had a question without notice about the health of our new education buildings. We need a commitment to healthy buildings and to water-efficient and energy-efficient buildings. With public housing, we are very disappointed that in this document there is no commitment to 10 per cent public housing in the ACT.
If we want to look at an example of non-planning, we can think of the vibration we have been having today in the building. I assume that is because of the work that is continuing in London Circuit. With a bit of planning, we could have incorporated better bus priority measures, with better bikeways and better footpaths. What we have got is just more of the same for a lot of money. And soon enough, I assume, we will have to redo it so that we can fix up the bus and bike measures. This is the sort of thing we are talking about; the government needs to plan ahead and this document is not really achieving this.
Let me go to the waste section. Unfortunately, I have only a small amount of time to talk about this. The waste section talks about how waste to landfill was reduced. This was good. But the document does not talk about investment in waste technology for the future. The lack of investment in this is why our resource recovery rate has stalled,
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