Parliamentary record : Part I debates (27 February 1990)
Debates for 5th Assembly 1987 - 1990; ParliamentNT; Parliamentary Record; 5th Assembly 1987 - 1990
1990-02-27
Made available by the Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory
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Debates
Northern Territory Legislative Assembly
Darwin
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Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory
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https://hdl.handle.net/10070/220388
https://hdl.handle.net/10070/699398
DEBATES - Tuesday 27 February 1990 consciousness expanding to the villages. Business Review Weekly had a very long and quite interesting article on the environment on 29 September 1989. The Canberra Survey conta i ned a copy of a statement by our own Pri me Minister in July 1989. I am sure that honourable members opposite would have read that with great interest. The New Scientist of 17 June 1989 contained an article about the end of ice ages. The article states that ice ages have occurred regularly over the past mi 11 ion years and that the next one was due to 'commence soon, un 1 ess the Greenhouse Effect prevented it occurring or counterbalanced it. Various people have argued that the 2 phenomena will balance each other out. The cover story in The Bulletin of 6 June 1989 was the greening of Australia. It discussed the political power of the greens, who they were and various options for courses of action. It was all laid out in The Bulletin, not at an international conference. The Times of 31 July reported that miners, foresters and farmers welcomed Hawke's environmental blueprint. Mr Speaker, I refer to that to demonstrate that many people supported the Prime Minister's approach. 'The Earth and Its Energy' contains an article about living with the Greenhouse Effect.. I t says that, although sc i ent i sts di ffer about the extent to which our climate has already been altered, they agree that only dramatic changes in how we 1 ivecan halt the earth' s dramatic warming. It is all, in there, Mr Speaker. It even has pictures, which the honourable minister's speech did not. Mr Perron: How many federal government representatives went to thi s conference that was a waste of time? Mr EDE: There may have been a reason for federal ministers to be there. I do not know how many of them attended, but I wi 11 come to the point which I really would have liked the minister to address and which coul d have turned the expenditure on hi s attendance at the conference into something of real relevance with a return for the Northern Territory. Mr Coulter: Territory before. Mr SPEAKER: You have never said anything that was relevant to the Now you have our interest. Order! Mr EDE: Mr Speaker, the Good Weekend of 19 August 1989 contained an article on the survival of the greenest. It showed how supermarkets are capitalising on the Greenhouse Effect. We can also read about the comments of Barry Jones. Another article is headed, 'The Sky is the Limit for Planet Earth'. As I said, all the information is there in our own library. One does not need to go to i nternat i ona 1 conferences to prepare a speech 1 i ke the one which the minister has just delivered. That is absolutely unnecessary. It is a waste of time and money. The minister has outlined some of the projects which are occurring in the Northern Territory. To the extent that they are effective in reducing emissions of gases which affect climatic change, I can support them. What I would have liked to have had, however, is a discussion of exactly what this government is doing about working in cooperation with nations in the arid and semi-arid zones of the world to develop the appropriate technology to deal with some of the problems. When this minister held the conservation portfolio previously, and when other ministers held it, I advised them that an Alice Springs scientist had 8768