Page 3103 - Week 07 - Thursday, 30 June 2011
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This budget puts in place some very useful initiatives in terms of new funding for climate change, water and environment. I would like to commend the government on their initial focus on getting their own house in order and their focus on low income Canberrans who are likely to face the fullest impact of rising energy prices and climate change over the next decades. Those two areas are good places to start and the Greens have been particularly keen to highlight that, as all governments move to address climate change measures, low income and/or disadvantaged families and communities should be protected to the best of our ability, that policies focusing on these groups should come first.
I think that the government in this budget have indicated that they agree with that. And while the job is not done yet, there are two specific measures that are highly commendable: the significant increase in the energy concessions rebate through the directorate of housing and community services budget and the commitment of nearly $4.5 million over four years to improve the water and energy efficiency for low income households.
This latter measure in particular is a very sensible measure as it sets families up for the future so that they can get some permanent relief from rising electricity prices but it also improves quality of life. As houses are made more energy efficient, they will also be made warmer and more comfortable. This funding starts with a more modest half a million dollars per year but the program expands over a four-year period. It is a sensible wind-up of a program that I hope will be very successful.
Of course the Greens highlighted the emerging discrepancy between the energy concession rebate and the increases over the past six years in energy prices and again we commend the government for responding so positively. Last year’s increase in the energy concession rebate was rather more tokenistic but this year the increases have effectively realigned the rebate to the level it was about five or six years ago. And we welcome that. It is the role of governments to protect those in our community who are most disadvantaged and I think this government has been conscious of that around the issue of climate change. That said, there will be more to do.
On that front, I was disappointed that a modest proposal that the Greens put forward to the government this year, indeed an idea from ACTCOSS, to fund an energy advocacy position in the community sector was not funded. The notion here was for someone who could develop expertise on energy policy issues from the perspective of the community sector and strengthen advocacy on behalf of the community in regard to emerging issues such as energy retail deregulation and time-of-use metering. Plus they could also have had an active role in the energy policy development that the government is currently engaged in, although I am somewhat concerned that the government has stopped talking to the community about this project anyway. But I will return to that a little later, as you might imagine.
The other welcome funding this year is $780,000 over four years for sustainability data management systems that will collect and collate data right across government on water and energy use. This was something that was always going to require some explicit financial commitment. We mentioned in last year’s speech on the budget that
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