Mr GARRETT (Kingsford Smith) (12.17 p.m.)—I join with other honourable members in welcoming the release of the report of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage entitled Sustainable cities and in confirming what I think is a very encouraging degree of unanimity around the House for both the recommendations and the bipartisan nature in which the report reached its conclusions and was supported. I certainly commend the chair, the member for Moore, and in particular the deputy chair, the member for Throsby, for the work that they have done.
If the expression ‘sustainable cities’ is going to mean anything, those cities will need to be healthy cities. They will need to be cities which connect people to their local communities. They will need to be cities which provide people with comfortable homes, safe streets, safe and accessible transport, and good walking and cycling facilities. They should provide parks for young people, playgrounds and other entertainment areas, and schools that are healthy and sustainable. They should be alive with native birds and other animals. They should have clean air and they should have clean water. They should have low rates of asthma and obesity and they should encourage a good, positive mental attitude. They should provide healthy jobs and healthy workplaces. Sustainable cities can do all those things and should do all those things. It would be one of the tasks of national government, particularly now that the Sustainable Cities report is out there, to take up those recommendations and to pursue the vision of a sustainable city that I have just summarised.
There is much support for this report. I understand that last night over 1,000 people attended a meeting in Sydney to discuss issues raised in the report. I think the member for Wentworth will probably speak to that when he rises. I understand that he was there. Professor Peter Newman, the New South Wales Sustainability Commissioner, who spoke at the meeting last night, wrote in today’s Sydney Morning Herald about the most surprising recommendation that this report made—that the government should not only fund urban transport but should give special consideration to passenger rail, especially in the outer areas of cities where car dependence has reached its limits.
In the bipartisan spirit with which this report is being brought down, it is probably as important to concentrate on what ought to happen and on what responsibilities the federal government may choose to take up as it is to concentrate on what should have happened in the past and on whatever shortcomings, real or imagined, state governments and local authorities may have had. There is no question whatsoever—I think all members would agree—that the challenges are too great for any one level of government to deal with in relation to sustainable cities. Professor Newman says:
If the next million people to arrive in Sydney were located next to quality rail options, then the city would save about $24 billion in land opportunity costs, ,4 billion in infrastructure costs and $4 billion to $6 billion in driving costs per year.
As he points out—and I have made mention of this a number of times in the House—with the looming oil crisis, these costs are probably understated as opposed to overstated. He says:
It’s now up to us to push the Federal Government to act on this report.
Certainly, that is what we want to do. I spoke last week in the House on the approaching ‘collision point’, as I described it, where we face increasing energy use, producing more greenhouse gas emissions, manifesting in climate change and leading to global warming. I said at the time that the need for a national energy policy and sustainable policies to be embedded in things like a national energy policy were absolutely critical. This collision point is just as critical as what we do in our cities. After all, that is where most of us live. That Australia is highly urbanised is well understood. We certainly need a national policy that addresses the challenges faced by our cities, and many of those challenges are environmental. Sydney’s ecological footprint is some 27 times the size of the city. We are hemmed in by mountains on one side and by the sea on the other. Like all other cities, particularly some others in the Federation, Sydney has no choice but to become genuinely sustainable. As members know, our water use is profligate. We are out of easy options to address dwindling supplies. Our motor vehicle use is out of control. I include myself as one who still drives a motor vehicle. I encourage members to consider the proposals put by the member for Wentworth and others and I also encourage them to consider taking up the option of using LPG in their motor vehicle. It would not entirely reduce greenhouse gas emissions but it would reduce some.
We have also absorbed a lot of productive agricultural land in the Sydney basin and we have not had decent planning and public transport infrastructure in place. Future citizens are condemned to longer journeys on roads with more pollution, more sickness, more accidents, more cost to the health system and with a drawdown on the ecology of the region which simply cannot be maintained. If we get our cities on a sustainable footing, we will have gone a long way to addressing and resolving some of the big environmental problems that we face as a nation. The Sustainable cities report is important. The fact that it carries bipartisan support gives it greater credence.
It is critical for the government to respond not only to this report but with increased urgency to the threat of global warming and the consequences that it has for us all. I refer to a speech given recently by the President of the ACF, Ian Lowe, at the National Press Club. He said:
Research released last month by ACF and the Australian Medical Association shows that a ‘business as usual’ approach to greenhouse pollution could result in the transmission zone for dengue fever stretching down the east coast as far as Sydney—
the sustainable city that some of us in this House have more interest in because that is where our constituents are. He continues:
In the same period annual heat-related deaths are expected to rise from 1,100 a year to between 8,000 and 15,000 a year.
A report from the Water Services Association of Australia, released last week, assumes a 25% reduction in water yields from catchments, due to the likely impacts of climate change. That’s a big drop in the drinking water available to Australia’s ... cities.
We are aware of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Synthesis Report, released earlier this year by the United Nations, in which again the warnings are very clear to us. Species loss is accelerating. There is increasing pressure of habitat loss and introduced species and chemical pollution is increasing, and those processes are being supplemented by climate change.
In bolder language, Elizabeth Kolbert, writing in the New Yorker some months ago, referred to the situation that we find ourselves in. Until a writer writes it for us, it is impossible for us to imagine that a technologically advanced society such as ours could in essence set about slowly destroying itself. But to some extent that seems to be what is happening. That is why embracing sustainability is so important.
On a smaller scale, I noticed an article in the Canberra Times headed ‘Early spring rocks animals: Kosciuszko species feel the heat’. It says:
Seasonal variability caused by global warming was already affecting wildlife in Kosciuszko National Park—
not far from this house of parliament—
causing a dramatic decline in numbers for some vulnerable species, a leading alpine ecologist said yesterday.
Seventy-five scientists who gathered in South Australia recently to consider the prospects for Adelaide simply made mention of the fact that, within 30 years, the city will be an urban wasteland unless it gets itself on a sustainable footing.
That is not to say that there are not many things that (a) we can do or (b) are already being done. I want to make quick mention of the efforts of Randwick City Council. On 11 October this year, Randwick council brought home two prestigious merit certificates for the 14th annual local government management excellence awards. These awards recognised an aspiring young manager, Anne Warner, and the combined development and implementation of the council’s Sustaining Our City program and its strategic 20-year city plan. The general manager, Ray Brownlee, pointed out:
Through these projects, Council has developed strong partnerships and is working with the community to preserve and enhance the local environment.
It is being done in Randwick. It needs to be done around the nation.
Sustainable cities are ultimately about making choices, but it is clearly time that our impact—the impact that we have on the environment—is lightened and lessened. Importantly, we should put these recommendations in their context and understand that having no meaningful national strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in place now means that it will be that much harder to get sustainable cities onto a permanent footing.
We urgently need pricing reforms and pollution reduction targets. We do not want slow mo politics from the government on this particular issue. I assert very strongly that a national strategy for climate change is an essential component of any national strategy to deal with sustainable cities. Both are needed. The former links to the latter. The components include a whole-of-government approach; infrastructure support, especially in relation to transport; policy reforms which support greenhouse gas reduction; energy efficiency; taxation reforms which remove disincentives to energy efficiency; elimination of harmful subsidies; and program funding. All of these things—some, if not all, identified in this report—are essential components of an integrated approach to sustainable cities. But, just as importantly, they make up the components of a national greenhouse gas or climate change strategy.
I was particularly pleased that the committee took up the idea of an Australian sustainability charter. There is no doubt that the reforms that we saw through COAG—the competition reforms of the 1990s—provided a reasonably effective way within the federation for us to actually deliver increased efficiencies in areas that COAG addressed. It is particularly important that this aspect of the committee’s report be taken up.
Members may be aware—I am sure some are—that there is a process under way initiated by the Treasurer requesting the Productivity Commission to inquire into the impact of competition policy reforms to date. On 14 April the Productivity Commission released its final report. That is under active consideration by COAG and it is moving through the system now. It is important to take a number of things from that report, but I think the most critical thing is the need for a national efficiency target to be set. You cannot drive sustainability reforms unless you have targets, and that is very clearly the challenge that the government has.
The Productivity Commission acknowledged the impact that productivity reforms had on the environment—those negative impacts—and it pointed out that future reforms will need to be specifically designed to have an environmental benefit. That so-called third wave of reform must include an outcome based approach—yes, through the continuing use of incentive payments, as has happened in the past, but also, if it is to happen successfully in the future, through national sustainability targets. That is one of the keys to creating sustainable cities that is identified by the report, and I commend it. The National Sustainability Commission, which had carriage of the charter targets, should get about its job with some urgency.
I want to refer very quickly, if I can, to some other aspects of the report, but before I do that I want to make one comment in answer to other comments that have been made relating to the responsibilities that state governments have, including taking on board the recommendations that this committee has made.
Interjection
Mr Turnbull—What do you think of the desalination plant?
Mr GARRETT—I am glad that the member took the opportunity to read my mind because I am just about to advise him. In relation to the proposed desalination plant, I do put it to the member, through the Deputy Speaker, that there is an expectation that governments should prudently plan for the worst case scenarios that face them in urban planning and that they should have options ready for those scenarios. To that extent, by identifying a desalination plant, the New South Wales government has done the right thing. But in my own view—and I am expressing a personal view as the member for Kingsford Smith—it is a last option and by no means the best option. There are a number of severe disadvantages to the proposal that has been put forward. It is very expensive, it will produce extensive amounts of greenhouse gas emissions and it underestimates the population of Sydney’s capacity to embrace recycling. But, more importantly than any of those, as someone who has been involved in conservation for a very long time, it betrays the first rule of sensible conservation: it is only using the water once. It is not good enough. I hope that the New South Wales government takes note of these comments and of this report.
In the time left available to me, let me commend again the work of this committee. The recommendations include governance and policy frameworks, planning and settlement patterns, investigating sustainable modes of transport, implementing education campaigns regarding recycled water and water efficiency schemes, encouraging the use of sustainable building products and practices, making sure that we have a five-star energy rating which actually works in a mandatory sense across all the planning regimes in the Federation, further encouraging the uptake of photovoltaic systems and renewable energy and making the study of the built environment a priority. They are all eminently worth while and important recommendations. As someone who has both inside and outside of the House talked about and worked for extensive periods in my adult life on these issues, I very much hope that they will be taken up by this government as a matter of urgency.