Page 98 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 15 February 2011
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Access to and affordability of fresh fruit and vegetables are key to maintaining people’s health. What we really do not want to see exacerbated is people’s poor health due to poorer diets. One thing that we know that we could easily do in the ACT is make it easier for people to produce food locally. The more fresh food that people grow here in the Canberra region, the less reliant we are on other areas’ production. This means fostering things like the farmers markets as well as commercial and domestic food production within our borders and the surrounding region.
At present there are 11 community gardens across the ACT. These allow people to grow vegetables, particularly those people who may not have room in their own gardens. It would be very easy to replicate this model right across the ACT. We already know that there is heavy demand for plots, far more than are available at the sites we already have. So we really believe this is an area to look at.
Transport is a massive weekly cost for families across Canberra. The Greens have a comprehensive and integrated transport plan that includes the provision of more public transport services as well as encouraging active transport. We are determined to make public transport a cheap, sustainable, fast and reliable way of getting about Canberra. Worryingly, studies conducted by transport researchers at the Queensland University of Technology have shown that the highest levels of car dependency are strongly correlated with high levels of mortgage stress—that is, it is usually the case that the families whose mortgage bills are the highest proportion of their income often have the highest bills associated with transport. This is a nexus we need to break. The provision of better public transport is a way that can provide a choice so that Canberra families may not have to purchase that second car with all of its running costs.
This afternoon in question time my colleague Ms Le Couteur raised some issues around peak oil. There was a lot of laughter from the opposition backbenchers, particularly Mr Alistair Coe, who thought it was a great joke. But what we need to understand is that direct line between peak oil and the impacts that peak oil are going to have on many people in Canberra and right across the world. These will be vulnerable families. These will be the families whom Mr Hanson has referred to, and others have referred to, in this place this afternoon. Those families who are having a hard time with some pressures and the cost of living will be the ones who will really feel the increase in petrol bills. They are the ones who really will feel those increases in utility costs—that is, the cost of running their houses and maintaining a lifestyle that they currently enjoy. It is important that we do not laugh at these ideas, but that we actually see that there are many things impacting on the cost of living. (Time expired.)
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment, Climate Change and Water, Minister for Energy and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (5.16): I am pleased to speak in this discussion on the matter of public importance this afternoon because the Labor government is focusing very strongly on assisting the poorest in our community, the most vulnerable, those on the lowest incomes, to address the challenges and to cope better with costs around energy and water, to make sure that they have a better standard of living and a better level of income to support them and their family into the future, because that is what a Labor government is always committed to do.
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