Page 2400 - Week 06 - Thursday, 10 May 2012
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We did include in this report information from, in particular, those 17 town council areas around the ACT. We were able to do that because, as many of you would know, the Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment carries out a state of environment report for those town councils as well. Therefore, we did have quite a bit of information that we could include in this report.
I have to say from the outset that I was disappointed that Mr Seselja put in dissenting comments. It is just unfortunate, I guess, that we could not come to a consensus position. Mr Seselja’s comments are included at the back of the report. After reading those comments, I would say that I think Mr Seselja has missed the point and the importance of understanding the impact of our ecological footprint.
The fact remains that the ACT has a very, very high ecological footprint and we know this because of the work that has been done. We have had extensive studies and so forth that were done through the Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment. The commissioner commissioned a report on our ecological footprint. It has told us that we really are using up the resources of something like 14 ACT’s worth of resources. This is something we really need to be looking at if we are to get a handle on how we can better, I guess, look after the environment that we live in and look at the sort of finite resources that we are using.
There was, as I said before, an ISA study. That analysed the ACT’s ecological footprint for 1998-99, 2003-04 and 2008-09. It used a methodology that showed that our footprint continues to rise. We do need to have a look at how we can reduce that footprint.
We have recommended that the ACT Commissioner for the Environment Act be amended to incorporate a formal responsibility for biannual reporting on the ACT ecological footprint. It is important that we keep track of what is going on. That way we can see whether or not particular programs and initiatives we are putting in place are reducing our ecological footprint. We also recommend that additional funding be given to the office of the commissioner and the Environment and Sustainable Development Directorate as well as community environment organisations and groups to promote a more sustainable use of resources. We have included in this things like food waste and energy efficiency so that we can play a role in the ACT’s the surrounding region’s ecological footprint to reduce that footprint.
The inquiry looked at other issues. As I said, there was the size of the footprint and there was the population growth and how it interacts with the ecological footprint. What we found is that in the ACT generally we do have quite high incomes. Therefore, people do spend quite a bit more money on goods and services. Of course, consumption is very much a part of this picture. We looked at that consumption around how you can still have very high standards of living, that we still ensure that people can enjoy a good lifestyle, but maybe there are some areas where we can look at that issue of consumption and how we might address that.
Mr Seselja addressed this in his dissenting comments by saying that his view was that this was around dampening economic activity. I think the report has shown that that is
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