Page 3776 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 24 August 2011

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(a) ensure the feasibility studies and market testing both include:

(i) examination of the adaptive reuse of existing office buildings; and

(ii) consideration of the options for an ACT Government office precinct, as opposed to just a single building model;

(b) ensure that whole of life cycle analysis of the environmental impact is considered;

(d) report back to the Assembly on progress by December 2011.”.

These amendments articulate the reality of the situation now and I hope clarify where we should be looking to go into the future. The amendments note the importance of providing good-quality office accommodation and the standards against which we should assess proposals for the future provision of government office accommodation. Further, the amendments note that the government has not delivered on the commitment set out in Weathering the change to undertake resource management plans for all government agencies. These were supposed to be completed by 2009; as yet we have seen very few of them.

During estimates hearings the environment minister talked about the idea of providing agencies with carbon budgets as a means of restricting their greenhouse gas emissions. It is very disappointing that these commitments have not yet been met. I hope that this debate does prompt some action within the government to ensure that it is delivering its commitments and that the government’s ecological footprint is reduced quite significantly in the near future.

We have also noted the commitment to 4.5-star NABERS ratings, something that clearly needs to be addressed. Many, if not most, public servants in the ACT would not be in a building that meets that standard, yet we know that all commonwealth public servants would be in a building that meets that standard; that is the commonwealth government policy. One of the things we did hear during estimates—one of the arguments put forward by the government for needing the new building—was around the fact that commonwealth public servants work in better office accommodation. Part of that was that they were more energy efficient buildings. We have put this into these amendments as a commitment.

The amendments call on the government to ensure that all future work on the issue, in respect of both feasibility studies and the market testing process, includes the adaptive reuse of existing office buildings and consideration of the options for an ACT government office precinct as opposed to a single-building model. The Greens are not convinced that the only way to go is a single building. It may well be that we achieve a better outcome from a precinct model than from a single-building approach.

While we appreciate the argument that co-locating all administrative staff together may provide some efficiencies, the reality is that this may well come at a significant

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