Page 3099 - Week 07 - Thursday, 30 June 2011
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needs to occur. I acknowledge that there is certainly some action from the government, as I already said, on wood smoke issues. That has been in response to a motion from the Greens.
Firstly, the wood heater replacement program should be extended to energy sources other than gas, provided these are efficient sources. Five per cent of Canberra’s residents are not connected to gas mains, meaning that it is not an option for them. I was pleased to learn through the estimates process that the government is pursuing such an option with ActewAGL distribution.
Secondly, the ACT needs to improve its smoke emission standards for wood heaters. I understand that there is a national process taking place. However, we know these processes can take some time. Adopting the New Zealand model of increasing emission standards would be one I would ask the government to lobby for. This is something that the Greens have done and will do. We would also ask that the government consider mobile air quality monitoring in the future as the current monitoring may not give an accurate reading of pockets where wood smoke accumulates.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (10.03): I will comment on a just a few elements of the Environment and Sustainable Development Directorate. Firstly, there are three matters worth noting in relation to the inner north stormwater reticulation network. Firstly, the budget allocates $7.5 million to fix up engineering problems with the network, in this case to replace reticulation pipes and other assets which were considered to be too small.
Once again, Mr Corbell has oversight of a capital works project that has run well over budget because of poor planning and a lack of attention to detail and design work. I wonder whether Mr Corbell will ever be able to deliver a capital works project on time and on budget. You have to remember that “on time and on budget” was Mr Corbell’s catchphrase when he was promising to deliver the GDE back in 2002.
Secondly, in the 2009-10 budget Mr Corbell announced that the ACT government was spending $13.9 million for the Dickson and Lyneham ponds and $10.2 million from the commonwealth for the Flemington ponds. One can only wonder if Mr Corbell would have persisted with the project had the commonwealth not come to the party to such an extent.
Would Mr Corbell, like his boss in relation to the Majura parkway, have gone ahead with the Dickson and Lyneham ponds anyhow on a gamble that the commonwealth would kick the tin later in the piece or would he simply have given up and just taken the plug out of the bottom of the ACT’s capital works piggy bank? The project certainly would have fallen far short of its intended purpose had the Flemington Road pond not been part of it. In the end the total project cost now stands at $31.6 million, a considerable cost, but for what?
This brings me to the third point on this topic. This government is spending $31.6 million of taxpayers’ money on a pet project of Mr Corbell’s. Let’s be frank: all of it is coming from the pockets of either the ACT or commonwealth taxpayers. He
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