Page 5007 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 26 October 2010
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who is earning that second income and perhaps they do not live in a well-insulated home.
They incur the same or perhaps even greater costs than the middle income family, but they have less capacity to adapt or mitigate the costs than those who are in the middle income bracket. This is not an argument to ignore middle income Canberrans in this debate. It is simply an argument to place special focus on those who are most disadvantaged in our community. That is simply the point that we are trying to make here.
Regarding the language that we have picked up in my amendment No 19, which we will come to shortly, we rang ACTCOSS and had a conversation about what was the best way to frame this amendment. That also points to the fact that we will not be supporting Mr Corbell’s amendment. We will be moving something subsequently in a moment. Hopefully, the work we have done when speaking with ACTCOSS defines what is considered to be the most appropriate language, or the best description for what we are trying to achieve here, and it will be supported by members of the chamber.
Mr Seselja’s amendment negatived.
Mr Corbell’s amendment agreed to.
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Mr Hargreaves): The question is that clause 17, as amended, be agreed to. Before you start, Mr Seselja, I notice that, quite correctly, you have been addressing your remarks to the chair. Given that we have a technical difficulty, could I ask you to raise your voice just a tad, although that may cause you some mirth.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (11.56): I have been going nice and quiet for you, Mr Hargreaves, but I will do my best. I will do my best to lift the volume. I move amendment No 2 circulated in my name [see schedule 1 at page 5085].
Amendment No 2, I think, would significantly improve the climate change council. It would have the areas that play the biggest part in emissions at the moment represented on the council. I found it was an extraordinary omission in this legislation. It was a demonstration that the work had simply not been done by Mr Corbell—given that around 70 per cent of our emissions come from stationary energy and given that around 20 per cent come from transport, we would not specifically have representatives of those sectors on this council. That is a major omission from the government and I think it is important that we correct it through this amendment.
This amendment will ensure that we have a person to represent the housing sector, a person to represent the transport sector and a person to represent retail electricity suppliers. If you are fair dinkum about this, you will go to the source—you will go to where the emissions are. We know the housing sector is important. If we are to deal with energy efficiency in the ACT, it is critical that we get energy efficiency right in the housing sector. Electricity would be covered, transport would be covered and the
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