Page 4581 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 26 November 2019
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across Canberra to celebrate and share their culture, if they are comfortable in doing so, so that we can learn about one another, have a great time and build a stronger community.
Again, I wish you all a very enjoyable break.
Suhaan, thanks very much for those well-crafted words.
I look forward to the final year of this term, next year, which will be a challenging one for us all. I look forward again to the formation of the Liberal government; this time, hopefully, I am right.
Environment—climate change
Valedictory
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (3.20): Summer used to be holiday time, a time of sun and sea, and definitely no school. But no longer. For me and many other Australians it has become a time of fear—fear of fire and floods—not the good times that we used to have in the holidays.
When former New South Wales Premier Neville Wran retired from politics, he was asked what his greatest achievement was. His immediate response was “saving the rainforests”. He was talking mainly about the Nightcap National Park, which is the boundary of the community where I used to live. It is a national park because of the actions of us all there, supported by some people in the city, to stop it being logged.
But the forests are no longer safe. These are the rainforests which are part of the Gondwana land which goes from Tasmania up to the top of Australia. If you had said that 40 years ago, when I was living there, no-one would have believed the idea that rainforests were going to burn. So what I want for Christmas is rain. I think that is what most of Australia wants for Christmas. We want slow, steady rain, nourishing rain. And I would like it for an early Christmas present, possibly even today.
Climate change is happening, and it is happening fast—faster than I thought it would. I can only hope that the fires light a fire in our collective consciousness so that we see a change in our political and corporate leaders, as well as our community, to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and start repairing our planet.
This year in the Assembly had two big highlights. Firstly, the ACT Legislative Assembly declared that it is a climate emergency. Secondly, there was the launch of the ACT climate change strategy by my colleague Shane Rattenbury. What I am wishing for now is a rapid and effective implementation of that strategy.
Another huge positive has been the big debate on public transport. I am really pleased that all three parties of the Assembly are now standing up for better transport, at least as each individual party sees that. The debate has moved on to how to do it better, which is a great step forward. We need to do it better and we need to give Canberra public transport that works for all of us.
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