Page 2396 - Week 06 - Thursday, 10 May 2012
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I commend Ms Hunter for bringing this important topic to the Assembly today.
MS PORTER (Ginninderra) (3.57): I am happy to speak to this important matter this afternoon and to endorse Mr Corbell’s statements in relation to the government’s strong commitment to tackling climate change. It is a shame Mr Smyth used quite a bit of his time parroting Mr Abbott’s scare campaign.
In July 2007 the government released the ACT climate change strategy, weathering the change action plan 1. This year we will release action plan 2, as we have been talking about this afternoon. The difference between the two reflects changing economic policy and technological context but also important lessons taken from our evaluation and review processes, as Mr Rattenbury was just saying.
I would like today to talk about how the government has adopted what we have learnt from weathering the change action plan 1 to create action plan 2 as well as some of the successes that we are able to build on. Weathering the change 1 outlined how the community with strong leadership from the ACT government addressed climate change between then and 2025. It contained 43 actions to both reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help the ACT government to adapt to climate change. The actions were funded through the 2007-08 budget, the 2007-08 supplementary appropriation and the 2008-09 budget.
A thorough review of action plan 1 was undertaken in 2009. Each action was reviewed in terms of status, effectiveness and efficiency, and appropriateness in relation to national policies and programs and relationship to further policy development. The review found there had been concerted efforts to implement the 43 actions outlined in the plan: 14 were completed, eight actions were completed with associated work going on; 20 actions were ongoing; and one action had been overtaken by commonwealth government policy.
The ACT government has continued to implement actions on climate change and has commenced the development of the second action plan, as you know. It is important to recognise that the success of action plan 1 included: development of sustainable energy policy, including energy efficiency improvement legislation adopted by the Assembly last week; implementation of energy efficiency improvements in government housing; undertaking energy efficient light replacement; introduction of the feed-in tariff scheme to drive the uptake of solar; and implementation of sustainability in schools.
Action plan 1 was the platform for the ACT to respond to climate change. While action plan 1 is full of success stories, the evaluation of it highlighted the need for greater emphasis on suitable metrics, both for individual actions and in relation to the greenhouse gas reduction targets. The government has recognised this, and action plan 2 will have improved data benchmarking, monitoring and reporting.
In November 2010 the ACT government passed the Climate Change and Greenhouse Reduction Act 2010, which established emission reductions targets: zero net greenhouse gas emissions by 2060; peaking per person greenhouse gas emissions by
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