Page 4243 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 23 October 2019
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
care about health impacts should be concerned about climate change. We already know that the excessively hot weather is leading to extra hospital presentations. Statistically, we believe that people are dying because of this in Australia, and I imagine in the ACT.
We know that people who care about the environment should be focused on climate change. It is already causing widespread environmental destruction, with more severe consequences to come. Those of us who have lived in Canberra for as long as I have can see that the climate and the environment in Canberra have changed due to climate change. The frosts just are not there. Hot weather is here. The species have changed. The flies, the insects, are gone. The species we used to share our suburbs with have gone.
In the interests of balance, I acknowledge up front that the infrastructure plan has a welcome investment in climate change. I welcome recognition of the important role of living infrastructure through the inclusion of future investment in trees to achieve the new 30 per cent canopy target. This is a really positive piece of infrastructure. This investment will be of big benefit to our community in the future hotter climate. You may all remember the work that was done by the CSIRO in terms of mapping the heat island effect in Canberra, which showed how important it was to have trees. That was one of the reasons for my motion earlier today.
It is pleasing that the plan includes zero-emission bus depots, and zero-emission buses are an important step in dealing with transport emissions. It is disappointing, though, that the plan does not include more buses.
I would have to agree with many of the comments that Miss C Burch made about needing to have a better public transport service. As she said, the patronage in Woden, Tuggeranong and Belconnen has gone down with network 19. But she did not mention one of the really positive things: from Weston, patronage has gone up by nine per cent. That demonstrates that if you give people a decent bus service or an improved bus service, they will use it. The people of Weston now have a quarter of an hour service between Cooleman Court and Woden. They are voting with their feet and getting on it. It is not called a rapid, because that is how it lucked out, you could say, but it is functioning as a rapid, and the people of Weston are using it.
The Greens and the ALP do differ on transport and climate change. As Mr Rattenbury said in his budget reply speech, the hundreds of millions of dollars for road duplications is not the mark of a plan that fully responds to climate change. More roads can temporarily make life easier for car drivers, and are sometimes justified, but we should be prudent and even reluctant when it comes to expanding roads; we certainly should not be rushing to double the size of every road that faces delays.
To avoid our views being represented as they have been at times in the past, I make the point very clearly that the Greens do support sensible road safety and quality improvements that ensure that our expensive road assets last and are used as effectively as possible. We support intersection upgrades that address black spots and projects that seek to move towards the vision zero road safety goal. Road trauma takes
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video