Planning and Environment Amendment (Wake Up to Climate Change) Bill 2022
Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (16:59): I am pleased to rise to make a very brief contribution to Mr Hayes’s Planning and Environment Amendment (Wake Up to Climate Change) Bill 2022. I think we need to give Mr Hayes credit. I think this is the best title of a bill this term. It is very snappy, Mr Hayes. Well done.
As I said in the address-in-reply to the Governor’s speech at the commencement of this term, we are seeing more and more weather extremes and we do need to start thinking of mitigation plans for that. We are looking at La Niña going on for a fourth year, so we are going to see floods on top of floods on already soaked land. We need to be really leading in this very true and existential threat of climate change. The forecasts are compelling, the scenarios are devastating. The other big issue is how do we restore. This is the decade. We are probably too far along so we are going to just be looking at mitigation, but can we restore some of these? Can we pull it back? And that means we need to be transitioning quicker than we are now to zero emissions.
There is work being done, and it is not bad. As we heard from Dr Ratnam and then we heard from Mr Melhem, there is some work being done, but it does need to go faster. Looking at the zero emissions that Scotland is working towards, they are much more ambitious than Victoria. Also their housing will be zero emissions by 2030. By 2030 they will be at zero emissions. If you look at the big build over there, it is 100 000 houses in 10 years—100 000 social houses—and they will all be double glazed, they all will be zero emission housing, and that will be done by 2030, including the retrofitting of existing public housing. Other countries show us that we can take a lead as long as we pay attention to it, and that is what this bill does. This bill insists that we pay attention to climate change when we are looking at planning decisions.
I think this is an intelligent bill. As Mr Hayes pointed out, it brings us into line with the Local Government Act, which requires us to be considering these issues. To that end, Mr Hayes’s bill can engage us to consider more and more how we deal with the consequences of climate change but also how we can look at reducing climate change in the coming years, which will be absolutely crucial. On that, I support this bill.