Page 3898 - Week 09 - Thursday, 25 August 2011
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Since 2004, we have seen more Canberrans begin to leave their cars at home, and we now lead the nation in commuter cycling. However, since 2004, there has been a shift in the trends and issues we must plan for, including the potential impacts of climate change, our ageing population and the importance of working more closely with regional neighbours on issues to improve health services, manage biodiversity, transport connections and economic resilience.
Late last year, as members would be aware, the government embarked on a broad and intensive conversation with Canberrans about the challenges facing the city and what issues they thought were most important. Prior to this, the government, through its sustainable futures program, had undertaken considerable research and stakeholder engagement to better understand the strengths in Canberra’s planned heritage. All of this is being used to revise the spatial plan and sustainable transport plan and establish a renewed planning strategy for the city.
The government anticipates that this revised strategy will be finalised by March next year and it will focus on creating a compact, sustainable city, reinforcing our key strengths—our town centres and inter-town connections, our clean, green economy’s capacity and our physical location in a diverse and growing region. The strategy will help guide spatial planning decisions for a more sustainable city.
Weathering the change action plan 2 will set out our pathways and actions to help us achieve our greenhouse gas reduction targets. A more detailed policy implementation on sustainable transport will also be announced later this year. The government will also shortly release its finalised sustainable energy policy. The purpose of the policy is to establish an integrated framework for managing the social, economic and environmental challenges faced by the territory as they relate to energy production and use, with a focus on four key targeted outcomes—secure and affordable energy, smarter use of energy, cleaner energy and growth in the clean economy.
The government has also released its draft waste strategy for the years 2010 to 2025, with a strong focus on further increasing our excellent level of resource recovery to over 80 per cent by 2015 and to over 90 per cent by 2025. This strategy will focus on a range of objectives, including less waste generated, full resource recovery, a clean environment and a carbon neutral waste sector.
Mr Speaker, you can see that the government is putting in place a broad range of objectives and policy frameworks to drive the shift to a more sustainable ACT. Importantly, the government is also focusing on measures to improve its own greenhouse gas footprint. A draft framework for ACT government carbon neutrality is currently under development, with all government directorates. The framework will be released this year. The target is to achieve carbon neutrality in all government operations by 2020 and will cover operations such as office accommodation, the corporate fleet, the ACTION bus fleet, street lights and education and health service delivery. As part of this, the government will continue to show leadership on the issue of making Canberra a more sustainable city.
MR SPEAKER: Dr Bourke, a supplementary?
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