Page 1823 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 4 May 2011
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28 February this year, and we are hoping that it does not take the government as long to finalise that waste strategy as it has taken on the energy strategy, or we will still be waiting for it some time in the middle of 2012.
Let me turn to transport, because it is clearly a very significant area where the ACT needs to cut greenhouse emissions. With 23 per cent of total emissions in the ACT coming from transport, it is our second highest source of greenhouse gas emissions. We are unusually car dependent in this city, with the lowest rate of public transport of any capital city in Australia.
The government’s own figures show that public transport patronage has stalled. In fact, it has even decreased in some recent years. When the Greens asked the government what targets needed to be achieved in the transport sector in order to meet our legislated 40 per cent greenhouse gas reduction target, the transport minister, Mr Stanhope, deferred to the sustainable transport plan, which is apparently still in development. Everything apparently hinges on waiting for this plan.
As Mr Stanhope said in February 2010:
One of the highest priority policy initiatives being pursued within Territory and Municipal Services across the entire department is the sustainable transport action plan … It is a number one priority for the government.
The government has continually made this promise, yet nothing has ever emerged. Not bad for the number one priority of the government! The plan is continually deferred. Mr Stanhope first announced in July 2009 that he would develop the sustainable transport action plan in the following six months. That did not happen. In fact, back then it was called the 2010-16 action plan, a title which understandably has now needed to be scrapped because we are in a transport policy vacuum.
The government’s history on implementation of strategic transport plans is sketchy. The last 2004 policy was ineffectual when released, because the government ignored its recommendations. When Ms Le Couteur introduced a motion last year saying that the government did not implement many of the recommendations from the 2004 plan, the government even agreed to that point.
Let me finally turn to the Nature Conservation Act. I am pleased to say that, after many years, the government released a discussion paper for a review of this important act in November 2010. But when we sat down and thought through the government’s time line for getting this act reviewed and giving consideration to the thought that the act may well need redrafting from the bottom up, I have to say that I am not hopeful that the government will complete this in the term of this Assembly. If that is the case, we are going to see a situation where in two terms of government, the government has not been able to deliver the review of our major piece of environmental protection legislation.
Almost more than any of the other strategies I have talked about today, this lack of timely action speaks to the government’s priorities, priorities that never fail to deliver on land release but never quite manage to put in place a strategy for the protection of
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