Page 451 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 18 March 2014
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supporting local jobs is important. It is a shame that the Labor Party have not had that approach for all of their time in office. It is a shame that ACT Labor did not stand up to federal Labor when the job cuts started under federal Labor, and it is a shame that this government do not deliver anything more than gloss. (Time expired.)
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (4.19): Thank you to Dr Bourke for bringing this matter of public importance to the Assembly: “The importance of building momentum in the ACT economy and supporting local jobs.” While I do not deny that this is a matter of public importance, I do have to note that it is virtually the same as the recent MPI from Ms Berry, which was: “The benefits to the ACT economy, business and our community of maintaining employment and creating jobs.” Last sitting we discussed another motion from Ms Berry about the importance of creating new economic and employment opportunities. And Dr Bourke’s motion tomorrow is almost the same as Ms Berry’s from last week: the importance of creating jobs and improving the economy with infrastructure. I am happy to talk again about the same topic, but perhaps we should use the MPI and private members’ business time to talk about a variety of issues of public importance, rather than the same one over and over.
But given that we are discussing it, I would like to reiterate some positions from the Greens. We believe that a strong economy for our future will mean a low carbon, green economy. Central to this is the very important notion of decoupling our economic growth from reliance on high polluting fossil fuels and other unsustainable practices. At its simplest, decoupling means reducing the amount of resources, like fossil fuels, that we use to produce economic growth and ensuring that our economic prosperity is not dependent on destruction of the environment. This is one of the paradoxes of our modern society and certainly of our modern political discourse. Climate change, the depletion of resources and the degradation of the environment are all recognised as serious threats. But at the same time there is a seemingly unstoppable drive for economic prosperity that is wedded to these concepts.
I am not saying it is easy. We all want a level of growth and prosperity. But the reality is that at every turn we need to think about the type of sacrifices we are making in order to achieve that growth and prosperity—as well as, of course, whether that is growth and prosperity that will last in the long term.
Decoupling should no longer be an alien concept. Even the United Nations—a fairly mainstream and representative body—is strongly emphasising the need for economies to urgently decouple economic growth from an increasing use of resources. The executive director of the United Nations environment program, Achim Steiner, said in 2011:
Decoupling makes sense on all the economic, social and environmental dials … People believe environmental “bads” are the price we must pay for economic “goods.” However, we cannot, and need not, continue to act as if this trade-off is inevitable. … Decoupling is part of a transition to a low carbon, resource efficient Green Economy needed in order to stimulate growth, generate decent kinds of employment and eradicate poverty in a way that keeps humanity’s footprint within planetary boundaries.
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