Page 579 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 22 February 2012
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
I will go through the various points in Mr Corbell’s amendments. I have no problems with putting in that the ACT Labor government’s waste management strategy has resulted in our having the highest recycling rate, at 70 per cent. We could add that. That is not a problem.
I have problems with his paragraph (2), which refers to and misquotes the Hyder report. I am afraid my response is going to be a bit slow because, as this was not actually tabled last week, I have only just got this a couple of minutes ago. He says that the Hyder report is untested in Australia and should not be part of a waste management process. That is really not what the Hyder report says. I read from page 112:
The Education scenario appears to be a very desirable waste management option, providing benefits in both cost savings and greenhouse emissions reductions.
That is sounding pretty positive to me. In terms of whether it should or should not be part of a waste management strategy by itself, that is how the Hyder report has it—different options. I welcome the comments that Mr Corbell has made, which would seem to imply that the government may be intending to do both, although he has not actually quite said that. I think that it would be consistent with what Mr Corbell said in his speech that, in fact, the government would be supporting paragraph (2) in my motion. It calls on the government to commence an education program along the lines indicated in the Hyder report.
Mr Corbell has spoken at length about the virtues of education. I think that we totally agree about the virtues of education. That is why we would like to follow what the Hyder report says is a very desirable waste management option and actually do it. It appears from Mr Corbell’s speech, and given that he is not supporting my motion, in particular (2)(a), that the government does not intend to put any additional resources into education and will continue doing a small amount, which is better than nothing but not enough to actually do anything.
He says that education cannot replace the dirty MRF. I think that the jury is out on that. If Mr Corbell actually read what our motion is saying, what our motion is saying is that we do education. We work out whether we can do as well as the Hyder report suggests. In fact, can we do even better? The Hyder report is talking about no gains from education after the first four years. I think that is very unambitious of them, and I think that it is entirely likely that in fact we can do much better.
Paragraph (3) is mutually contradictory in what he has written. It says:
… source separation can result in high quality recovery of organic material, but has been proved to be ineffective to achieve high rates of recovery …
It then says:
… the ACT already achieves organic garden waste recovery at more than 90% …
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video