Page 2750 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 28 June 2011
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I urge the government to finalise its waste strategy soon to make it a very strong and sensible strategy. The Greens did put in a lengthy submission on how to do this and start implementation. I would really like to see real action on this before the end of this parliamentary term. In Canberra we could have a third bin to collect organic materials. This was one of the parts of our submission to the government on its draft waste strategy and the Greens suggested a number of ways forward on this.
On this point, I note the proposal to increase the size of our landfill at Mugga Lane. Of course, this is the type of costly unsustainable action that we are trying to avoid by implementing a quality waste and recycling strategy. As we know, 50 per cent of Canberra’s residential waste is organic. Not only would a third bin collection system go a long way towards addressing this; it would see valuable organic material reused in the most sustainable way.
One other issue I want to mention in relation to Civic and our town centres is the lack of water fountains. It is something I have pushed for a long time as I think it is essential to give people easy access to clean water when they are out and about in Canberra. It also contributes to solving of our waste problem because we will no longer buy drinks in plastic containers.
Ms Bresnan has already discussed this but I do want to note that public transport has received only limited attention in this budget. Mr Coe’s speech on the subject was somewhat alarming in that his basic suggestion seemed to be to significantly and drastically reduce funding for ACTION. But for the government there seems to be a pattern of business as usual. The government talks a lot about sustainability issues but what they do is business as usual. As we have pointed out before, as Ms Bresnan has pointed out, the heroic efforts made on Majura parkway contrast quite starkly with the lack of effort being made on light rail and other sustainability measures.
I would like to point out, as I did last week in the Majura parkway debate, the previous feasibility study conducted on Northbourne Avenue. This was conducted in 2005 by the Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation. Had it been implemented, some considerable improvements on Northbourne Avenue would in fact have already been made by now. It had a plan for building bus priority lanes and it had a plan for a dedicated space down the middle for light rail in the future. It discussed putting light rail in immediately and it was very positive about this. It also included additional space for cycling.
Now we are doing another feasibility study for basically the same thing on Northbourne Avenue. It is the same government that is doing the same study. I hope we do not have the same result—nothing. What we need is some actions. (Second speaking period taken.) What would be more useful than repeating the existing study on Northbourne might be to do a comparative study that compares the long-term usefulness and sustainability of different options such as building a freeway in Majura Valley with building high quality rapid transport. Ms Bresnan’s motion last Wednesday pointed out that the government is proceeding with the Majura freeway despite having never done such a comparison and it voted down our motion which asked them to do so.
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