Page 3912 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 25 September 2019
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
agenda for the ACT government. This strategy, the climate change strategy, simply reaffirms that view.
It is interesting that the government would seek to bring about car-free days in the ACT. There is a letter going around on Facebook—a scan of a letter from Jon Stanhope back in 2009—saying that he categorically refused to have car-free days in Canberra. Not for one day would he allow it.
You wonder what has happened now. I like how they say it as if it is going to be just car-free days or just particular areas. If you go into what the Greens have proposed, you will see “deliver car-free days in Canberra as well as possibilities for car-free areas and share zones”. As well! You have car-free areas, you have shared zones, and then you have car-free days as a third. They are not two; we have three: car-free areas, shared zones and car-free days.
What does Mr Rattenbury say? What is a car-free day? When you say you are going have car-free days as well as car-free areas and share zones, I am curious as to why there are three things there. We are not talking about car-free areas and shared zones—
Mr Barr: There is the National Multicultural Festival next year.
MR COE: That is one of them. That is a car-free area. But what are car-free days? It is a different thing according to what the Greens have published.
Mr Barr: A day when there may well be an area that you do not drive your car in.
MR COE: I think you will find that these are three things. It is all very well for Mr Barr to try to backtrack from this plan that they were heralding as this great triumphant document that is going to change the climate. The reality is that the reception in Canberra is quite different from what they were expecting. The reality is that not rolling out gas, sending the price of gas through the roof and making it near impossible to maintain gas in industry in the ACT, is going to have a devastating impact on Canberrans’ lives. That is the intention. They are trying to change behaviour; they are trying to change lifestyles. That is in the document. We on this side do not rebuke Canberrans for the lives they live. It is simply the Labor Party and the Greens that have the arrogance to tell people that they are living the wrong way.
MR STEEL (Murrumbidgee—Minister for City Services, Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Minister for Recycling and Waste Reduction, Minister for Roads and Active Travel and Minister for Transport) (6.10): I thank Mr Gupta for bringing this motion to the Assembly. Things are changing, whether Mr Coe likes it or not. The question is how we manage that change. The responsible thing to do is to manage that change by implementing a strategy to both deal with climate change adaptation and put in place measures to reduce emissions. That is exactly what the government has done.
Canberrans have expressed their concern about how climate change is impacting upon their lives. The government has responded with a detailed plan that goes out to 2045, with measures for how we can continue to lead the nation in protecting our
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video