Page 2980 - Week 08 - Thursday, 15 August 2019
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registered community housing providers providing more affordable housing in the 2022-23 financial year.
I now go to probably the most important issue in this portfolio: climate change. In May this Assembly passed a resolution agreeing that we are in a climate emergency. Thank you all very much for voting for it. This is in recognition of the fact that we are facing a global catastrophe, an ecological breakdown, and this is having devastating impacts on our environment, our budget, our society and also the government’s budget. The resolution says that action is needed across all government agencies and that climate change needs to be at the centre of government decision-making.
I emphasise here again that the Chief Minster’s directorate, as the central agency, should be leading this transition and ensuring that the government orientates itself around climate change action. As my colleague Mr Rattenbury said in his speech in reply to the budget:
The climate emergency declaration cannot be a platitude. We are in an emergency. The government’s decisions and the government’s budgets need to be framed around the issue of climate change and impacts on future generations.
Some of the recommendations in the estimates report go to this issue. The committee recommends, for example, that all agencies orientate their decision-making around climate change and ensure that they are compatible with the ACT’s climate change goals. It also recommends that the ACT government ensure that budget funding decisions are explicitly considered in the context of the zero emissions by 2045 target and associated interim targets and that the costs of carbon emissions or the social cost of carbon are factored into treasury and directorate cost-benefit analysis.
This is really just a starting point for a government that recognises the climate change threat and genuinely intends to respond. The starting point is to ensure that government decisions are consistent and compatible with climate change action. We should be stopping and reconsidering any decisions that would make the problem worse. In this category I cite a few things like building unsustainable infrastructure that is reliant on fossil fuels or continuing to plan our city in a way that encourages private car use instead of more sustainable options.
I also touch on building policy. When people buy a new home they have no way of knowing how well it is built. Unfortunately, too many people find they have bought into a poor quality building, with many thousands of dollars of repair work needed, and that is just unfair. That is why I am very pleased to see the government include almost $9 million over four years for additional building quality compliance work to drive dodgy builders out of the system. It has also been good to see the government taking a strong approach on building quality over the last 12 months.
On participatory democracy, the Greens are strong supporters of deliberative democracy, and it has been interesting to see the experimentation in this over the last few years. I am pleased to see that the budget at least partly implements the better suburbs statement, which was a result of the Greens participatory budgeting motion. But I note that the budget does not include funding for any new deliberative
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