Page 967 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 29 March 2011
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is calling for urgent action. But the reality is that this is a very conservative figure. Whistleblowers from the agency have recently revealed that the International Energy Agency “has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying”.
The global scenario of peak oil is itself very relevant to the ACT, but the question today is: how will it impact on the territory? What is our strategy to respond and how will we ensure that we as a city are resilient to this impending challenge?
I want to elaborate on the peak oil contingency plans created by other councils. Ms Le Couteur touched on this briefly in her speech and the Greens are saying that the ACT also needs a peak oil strategy and plan. One useful example is the peak oil action plan and a peak oil contingency plan created by Maribyrnong council in Victoria—I do not believe the Greens are in charge there—and I urge the government to look at it. The council assessed its operations based on oil use and criticality and made plans to ensure it can continue to deliver services effectively. We need a similar level of action for the ACT. Will residents in the ACT see disruptions to their rubbish collection, for example, as peak oil impacts us?
Maribyrnong council very wisely took a strong risk management approach to peak oil, modelling different scenarios and the actions it would need to take to continue delivering services in each scenario. This covers areas such as waste management, infrastructure management and maternal and child health. It involves measures such as, for example, stocking long life food and other essentials for those dependent on council services in the event of a short-term, severe cut to fuel availability. It has also created a fuel storage facility to maintain critical vehicle operations in the event of a short cut in fuel supplies. It has developed triggers so that certain factors will serve as an indicator that contingency measures need to be set in place. The work of the council means that it has now identified its key areas of threat. It knows, for example, that its food chain network is particularly vulnerable to a short-term cut in oil supply.
But here in the ACT our government does seem to be somewhat asleep at the wheel. We do not have a peak oil strategy and, perhaps more concerning, as we have pointed out before, the government largely seems wedded to business as usual. If we take transport planning as an interesting example, the government currently has close to $200 million out in new road contracts. Yet in the last budget new initiatives that could loosely be termed sustainable, such as bus infrastructure, pedestrian initiatives, transit ways, lighting and cycling initiatives, total about $40 million.
One way to think about this, and this was something emphasised by Enrique Penalosa from Colombia who was recently brought to the ACT by the government to give lectures, is that the government’s budget allocations are dominated by investing in infrastructure for private transport. We believe this must change in the future. The majority of our investment will need to be in public and active transport. We believe this is also an equity issue: as private car travel becomes increasingly expensive, is it fair to spend the majority of the transport budget supporting this mode?
I think that is a really interesting point, that equity issue, and it comes to the cost of living—something that has been brought into this chamber before by motions, by
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