Page 2391 - Week 06 - Thursday, 10 May 2012

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Three in five Canberra families will be worse off, paying a portion of the $189 tax. A family of five can expect to see their electricity bills increase by $478 from 1 July, of which $370 is attributed to the carbon tax. A family of four can expect to see their electricity bill increase by $333 from 1 July, of which $258 is attributed to the carbon tax. A family of three can expect to see their electricity bills increase by $297 from 1 July, of which $230 is attributed to the carbon tax.

It will add at least $73 million to the cost of running the ACT government over the next four years, and that will be passed on to taxpayers. That is between $110 and $140 per household each year just to cover the government’s existing activities. And this is on top of the $225 that they have to pay every year in their power bills to pay for this government’s solar feed-in tariff scheme.

Canberra residents will have to collectively pay up to $1 million a month to support the ACT Labor-Greens energy efficiency improvement scheme. And what about the Cotter Dam blow-out? It has added an estimated $230 to every Canberran’s water bill even before the effects of the March floods are taken into account. Then there is the flagging ACTION bus network, which Canberrans pay approximately $321 per person every year to maintain regardless of whether they use the bus service or not. And let us not forget about the plastic bag ban.

The question is: how effective are some of these initiatives? And what quantifiable environmental measurable do Canberra residents get in return for supporting the ACT Labor-Greens government schemes? Here are a few examples from the recent State of the environment report. Canberra’s ecological footprint is 13 per cent above the Australian average—the second highest in the country, behind Perth. That is an outstanding achievement on behalf of the Greens-Labor alliance! Canberrans are using 14 times the land area of the ACT to support their lifestyles. Greenhouse gas emissions have increased eight per cent over the last five years under a Labor government and a Labor-Greens government—an eight per cent increase in greenhouse gas emissions. That is an outstanding performance from this Greens-Labor alliance! Waste generation is up 28 per cent—faster than the rate of population growth. Green spaces decreased by nine per cent over the last four years. And there was only a 4.9 per cent take-up rate for GreenPower by Canberra residents.

These are the achievements, as measured by the commissioner, that condemn this government, this Greens-Labor alliance, for their incredibly poor performance on the environment. It is quite astounding that Ms Hunter puts on the notice paper the importance of evaluating the ACT’s performance in delivering climate change initiatives when we have a report that damns both the Greens and the Labor Party for their failures in government over that period.

Ms Hunter’s MPI today is quite poignant. Yes, evaluating climate change initiatives are important. Yes, we do need to measure outcomes. But when the results are less than stellar, Ms Hunter, the Greens and ACT Labor must hone their facts: their initiatives have missed the mark, yet at the same time they are costing Canberra residents millions of dollars every year to maintain.


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