Page 860 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 27 February 2013
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the people of Kambah, the people of southern Woden, the people of east Tuggeranong and the people of Wanniassa all care about the cost of living and all care about what their share of this government’s initiatives will be.
Of course, residents will have to collectively pay up to $1 million a month to support the ACT Labor-Greens energy efficiency improvement scheme. Then we go to the flagging ACTION bus network which Canberra residents pay approximately $321 per person every year to maintain, regardless of whether they use the bus service or not. So let us ask the minister: what will the subsidy be for the light rail? We will build it—that is one cost—but then it has to run. We do not make money on the buses. We all know that most public transport systems around the world tend not to make money, but the degree of subsidy after the fare box is somewhere between 45 and 55 per cent. Not in the ACT; it is well below seven or eight per cent. In fact, we know that growth in the number of people using the bus service is not really happening. Again, Ms Berry, that is another effect of your colleagues’ policies. Again, they did not write in the speech for you the true nature of what these policies cost because it is all handed on to the taxpayer.
Let us not forget about the plastic bag ban. Yes, this will change the world; the earth will be a better place because we are going to ban plastic bags. The government cannot show a single tangible environmental benefit of this scheme. The interim review of the Canberra plastic bags ban noted that the Rawtec review concludes that there is insufficient data to determine whether the ban has had an impact on the number of plastic shopping bags in the ACT litter stream.
When asked whether the shopping bags were an environment issue, our own local environmental protection agency responded by saying that they cannot say it has been one of any great significance. There you go: the policy gurus leaving the reality, instead of actually doing the work and finding out what the effect and the costs would be. Britain’s environmental protection agency found that shoppers would have to use the same cotton bag every working day for a year to have a lesser impact than a lightweight plastic bag.
The Productivity Commission found that, based on the evidence available to the commission, it appears that the Australian state and territory governments do not have a sound case for proceeding with their proposed phase-out of plastic retail carry bags. In South Australia, bin liner sales have doubled the national average since free plastic shopping bags were banned more than two years ago. It is cause and effect: environmental policies that downstream do not save the environment but hinder the environment.
That is where we go back to where we started from. Where did we start? The state of the environment report. What has happened in the last term of this Assembly? Canberra’s ecological footprint 13 per cent above the Australian average; Canberrans using 14 times the land of the ACT to support their lifestyles; greenhouse gas emissions increasing eight per cent over the last five years; waste generation up 28 per cent, faster than the rate of population growth; green space decreasing by nine per cent over the last four years and only a 4.9 per cent take-up of green power by Canberra residents.
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