Page 2809 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 13 August 2019
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do more than just say we do not want it to happen. We are going to have to make some investments in changing how waste is dealt with in the ACT and Australia.
I am pleased to see $18 million for waste initiatives, and I am pleased that there is some early planning for FOGO, food organics and green organics. That was the subject of my PMB motion in June. I repeat that I had no idea, of course, what was in the budget when I moved that. Food organics are one of the easy-peasy things for the ACT government to do to reduce emissions and to turn waste into a great green resource to make more sustainable food. I welcome funding for the parliamentary agreement item for a hundred more recycling bins in public spaces, as Minister Steel talked about.
Talking about bins, the government urgently needs to sort out the issues with green bins. It seems entirely unclear what is going on. I want to go to the recommendation from the estimates committee. To give people who were not at estimates a bit of background, if you are a public housing tenant and you want to get a green bin, your address is not up on the list of addresses that can get green bins. We asked the government about this in the estimates process. They made the bizarre excuse that this was done so that it was not possible to identify ACT Housing properties. Of course, it in fact does the opposite, because you can identify them, as I have identified them, by looking them up and seeing the ones that are missing.
It is beyond belief that TCCS cannot find a list of addresses of all the residences in the ACT. It simply beggars belief. Recommendation 205 of the estimates committee was:
The Committee recommends that the ACT Government improve the application process to allow ACT Housing tenants to easily request green waste bins for the address at which they reside.
The government said:
Agreed.
Housing ACT tenants can access green bins through ACT No Waste the same as other Canberrans.
That is actually not the case. They would not be able to find their address on the list, which does make it impossible. This afternoon I checked with a couple of complexes. I live in an area which has quite a few public housing complexes in it, so I do not need to use this website to work it out, but it is depressing to find that the ACT government is not treating ACT Housing tenants with the same respect as it treats other people in Canberra, and also to find that, it would appear to me, the housing act is not being adhered to, because, by looking it up, you can work out the addresses of ACT Housing tenants.
They did say:
ACT NoWaste is also currently identifying measures to improve the process for ACT housing tenants to register. A Customer relationship management (CRM) system is currently being investigated to improve the overall customer experience for all household waste services provided by the Territory.
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