Page 3172 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 20 August 2019
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doubt continue. But why do we care, Madam Speaker? According to question on notice E19-508, there are 88 nominations waiting for provisional registration. Forty-two of those were made in the year 1999 or before. That is 47 per cent of nominations. Almost half of all nominations have waited 20-plus years to be assessed. They were nominated in the last century. If they did not quality for heritage listing then, they probably will now.
It is disappointing, Madam Speaker. Heritage is so important, and the directorate has shown that they do great things for Canberra’s heritage. But consistent mismanagement by this government, with under-resourcing, delays and intentional ignorance, is holding us back. With proper ministerial management, ACT heritage would be empowered to do even more. That management will not be found under this government.
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (3.05): I am going to be talking about the planning and land development parts of this rather large directorate. The first thing I am going to talk about is the climate emergency. The ACT Assembly has declared a climate emergency. That declaration is basically saying that this needs to be factored into our planning system. If it is truly an emergency, it needs to go up to the top of the considerations for our planning system. We need to make sure that how our long-lived assets, both public and private, are built, planned and changed make this a consideration. The regulation for this needs to be changed to recognise and build for the climate emergency.
The reality is that buildings that are built today, buildings that are approved today, are going to operate in a very different future climate. It will be hotter; it will have more extremes; there may well be more floods; the winds will probably be stronger. It is going to be a more extreme climate and it is not going to be a positive development.
As well, in our current evaluation of the ACT’s greenhouse gas emissions, we basically just look at the emissions that occur in this territory, which are the operational emissions. When we look at long-lived infrastructure buildings, roads, trams or whatever, we need to start also looking at life cycle emissions. I think that concrete used to be only two per cent of global emissions, but now, if you look at it all together, more like seven or eight per cent of global emissions come from concrete around the world. It is big enough to be a medium-sized country all by itself from a greenhouse gas emissions point of view. These are the sorts of things that we have some responsibility for. There is a large concrete building being constructed outside my window as I speak.
I hope EPSDD will accelerate climate-related work over the next year. Let me give a few examples of the work they are doing. One is the EER review. This is a parliamentary agreement item. It has been started but, unfortunately, has not yet been finished and delivered. Another is making room for trees in residential development. This is a project that EPSDD has been looking at but has not yet finalised. Apartment design guidelines are in the same boat. With phasing out natural gas in some new estates, there has been a change for one of the new suburbs of Ginninderry, but this needs to be something for all of Canberra, not just a small part of Canberra.
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