Written by Andrew Braddock, ACT Greens Member for the Gungahlin electorate of Yerrabi.
Canberra is different to the rest of the country.
While Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison were waving lumps of coal around, the Greens led the ACT to achieve 100 per cent renewable electricity.
In the last few years, while federal Labor has been approving 23 new coal and gas mines, the ACT Greens have got local Labor to agree to phase out fossil fuel gas. We’ve stopped connecting new homes to gas, and we’re helping people with the upfront costs of switching from gas to electric heating, hot water and appliances, to cut their cost of living and cut emissions.
This election, the ACT Greens are promising to step up ambition on climate change, to reduce energy costs for Canberrans, and to show other governments what it looks like to take climate change seriously.
We know, in this climate crisis, every tonne of emissions not in the atmosphere is a positive step to a better future. We can’t just rest on what you’ve done. You need to push at every opportunity, with every vote, to work together as a community to make the changes that are needed.
We’ve also got to make sure the cost-of-living crisis, which is causing widespread inequality, doesn’t hold people back from taking the climate action they want to take.
Our community wants real climate action that leaves no person behind.
Whilst Canberra has been fortunate recently with mild summers, climate change has continued to impact across the globe. It is only a matter of time before we face a repeat of the Black Summer at the end of 2019. Where the smoke filled our homes and our lungs with the particles of incinerated forests, homes and wildlife. Many of us realised in those weeks how leaky our homes were and how little protection they sometimes provide.
That devastating Black Summer was shortly followed by months of confinement to our homes and suburbs as COVID lockdowns kicked in. People with the least energy-efficient homes were the least comfortable and paid the most to keep their homes at a liveable temperature. Suburbs with the least shade cover were the least hospitable in those precious hours outside. Local climate action means making homes and neighbourhoods more resilient to the change we’re already experiencing, and that’s what the Greens will do.
There’s so much we can do at the local level, but I haven’t heard any other party mention the words “climate change” in their election announcements. In fact, the Canberra Liberals have said they want to go backwards, abandoning the gas phase-out, meaning they’ll keep Canberrans reliant on fossil fuels.
Transport is now the ACT’s biggest polluter, and sprawling suburbs are among the greatest threats to our natural environment. The number one recommendation from the ACT’s latest State of the Environment Report was to set an urban boundary and stop expanding the city into bushland. Setting a limit and densifying in existing inner areas offers us an opportunity to make Canberra more convenient and affordable for people to get around, while also cutting emissions and protecting nature.
The Greens will finish currently planned suburbs and then stop building on the outskirts of the city. We’ll expand ACT nature reserves, restore local rivers, lakes and creeks, and make sure new homes are efficient and sustainably built.
All this is not just possible, it’s imperative. We can, and must, look after people and our patch of the planet at the same time.
