Page 1146 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 2 April 2019
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the broccoli and take it into the kitchen. Then I am not supposed to put it in the green bin, but if I decide the broccoli has been so infested by caterpillars that I want to get rid of the whole thing from my garden it goes in the green bin.” It does not make sense.
The Greens, for a long time, have said we would like to see our organic waste composted, as is happening with the green bin waste. I was a little concerned to hear that Minister Steel was suggesting that organic waste might, in fact, turn into waste for energy. I really think this is problematic. Australia has the oldest soils in the world. We tend not to have highly nutritious soils. We need basically to put all the organic matter we can back into our soil if we are to keep plant productivity going in Australia. If we do not do that, we will not be the only species who will suffer. I would like to say that this is something that we need to look at carefully. We know what we can do and what we should do.
As members may be aware, my daughter lives near Byron Bay. I am recently back from a holiday there. In Byron Bay, which is a lot smaller than we are, they have green bins. It takes garden waste. It takes kitchen waste. It works there. Why can we not make it work here?
I was glad that Minister Steel mentioned trees, but I was really disappointed to find reference to only 450 new trees. I am sure that he will remember that in the last sitting period I lodged a petition from over 1,400 people asking the ACT government to plant more trees. The petition talked about 7,000 trees a year and, as we all know from a question on notice that I asked, we are actually decreasing the size of our urban forest by 3,000 each year. So 450 is good, but it is simply not enough.
I was concerned when I listened to the minister’s discussion about roads. Obviously, I am in favour of increasing safety on roads—and I have no problems with making the Monaro Highway safer—but where I do have a problem is that this seems to be the government’s major road priority. I would suggest that if we are going to have a transport system that works for Canberra—a transport system that, dare I say, even lives up to the ideals suggested in the draft transport strategy, consultation on which has just finished—putting most of our energies into making roads faster is not the way we should be going.
With fast roads in particular, we should be making a separated space for rapid public transport, be it light rail, as will soon be coming to the city, or rapid transport buses. The blue rapid from Woden to the city works exceptionally well because a large part of it goes through a segregated bus-only lane and is not part of congestion. That is the emphasis that I would like to see on our road improvements, rather than enabling people to go faster. That has a place, but if we are to meet the ideals of our public transport system, and if we are to meet the ideals of our greenhouse gas commitments because we are moving our electricity system to renewable energy, transport will become the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions within the ACT. We need to significantly change how we are going to do it.
In general, I am very pleased with the emphasis on city services, but there are some areas where I think that, in the interest of long-term sustainability, we can and should do better.
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