Page 1952 - Week 05 - Thursday, 5 May 2011
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Canberrans who are most affected by the rise in electricity prices that have already come and that are predicted in the short to medium term as a result of transition to clean energy generation and the upgrading of the infrastructure that has been so badly neglected in recent years.
In terms of government operations, the government’s purchase of renewable energy is increasing and that is certainly welcome, an additional five per cent up to 37.5 per cent. Unfortunately, this is slipping behind the 10 per cent per year that was in the Greens-ALP agreement but it is an improvement on last year and is certainly a step in the right direction. It is important to note that this comes hand in hand with the new resource management fund of $2 million which offers loans for agencies to run projects designed to improve sustainability outcomes for government agencies.
This is a very important point because what it speaks to is that there is an opportunity for agencies to save money through energy efficiency which helps offset the costs associated with the increased purchase of green power. Certainly that is something that the Assembly has been able to achieve and I think it is an opportunity that is there for many agencies to use this fund to make those similar savings themselves.
It would be nice for the government to consider offering such a loan scheme on a broader scale to the general public to fund energy efficiency measures in their own homes, but of course we are still waiting for the government’s energy policy and their energy efficiency strategy for the residential sector, so perhaps there is still time for an idea like that to emerge. I certainly hope it is something that can be taken into account.
The budget also contains $780,000 over four years for sustainability data management, to collect and collate data for the whole of government. This is useful because at long last we may actually get some accurate reporting by government on these measures and a real baseline from which we can then start to set the much talked about departmental carbon budgets, because of course if we are not measuring, if we do not know and we do not have a reliable source of data, it is impossible to have an accurate sense of what needs to be achieved and what has been achieved. It is important that we are able to measure these factors so that we can know what is actually happening and also take the valuable lessons from what has worked and perhaps what has not worked.
I also spoke about the various initiatives for low income families and I am particularly pleased on this front because members may recall that during last year I tabled a motion in the Assembly—it was partially debated; we did not manage to finish—that addressed exactly this issue of costs for low income people in Canberra, for the most vulnerable households. Low income families, people living with a disability and older people in the ACT are the people who perhaps perversely spend more time at home and generate greater electricity bills and yet have the least means to pay than the rest of us who come to work for large portions of the day and do not have the same heating and cooling bills.
In that motion we advocated for a number of things and I am very pleased to say that the government has adopted a number of those points. I welcome the fact that those ideas have been picked up because it is always good when a good policy idea comes
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