Our Vision
Create a carbon price – encouraging gas and renewables to lower our massive carbon footprint. 100% offset by other tax cuts.
Increase the water price – eliminating the need to use the north-south pipeline or the desalination plant and increasing river flows. 100% offset by other tax cuts.
Expanded parks – both marine and terrestrial, but with more public access.
Sustainable Transport – See our Transportation policy.
Download our Action Plan
The Big Eco Tax Swap
We propose to swap our ‘dumb’ regressive taxes for ‘smart’ taxes on carbon and water. This drives the change to sustainability without having to increase tax to pay polluters for tiny emission changes or to buy back non-existent water entitlements.
Stop Logging Catchments and Old Growth
We support ending the logging of water catchments and old growth forest with adequate compensation to impacted workers. Protection of endangered species and improving water supply is more important than logging.
The Shift To Sustainability
The Carbon Price – drives a shift to whatever low-emission and energy saving technologies make economic sense. The government should facilitate and regulate where necessary but may not need to mandate particular measures – the carbon price does the driving.
The Water Price – drives a change to water conservation, assisted by government measures such as ending logging in catchments, recycling storm water and maintaining water restrictions. The desalination plant and north-south pipeline should never be needed.
Expanded Parks – both marine and terrestrial parks should be expanded and opened up to more non-damaging recreational uses. For example, more Eco-lodges should be allowed in national parks subject to suitable guidelines. Limited recreational fishing should be allowed in the expanded marine parks.
Rental Properties and Efficiency
Neither the landlord nor the tenant are likely to take significant steps to improve the efficiency of a property leased for less than a year. The landlord does not pay the bills and the tenant has no interest improving the property.
We propose changes to tenancy laws to allow tenants to deduct 30% of electricity and water bills from set rental payments up to 30% of the total rental agreement. This would be expected to sharpen the landlord’s interest in the energy efficiency of their properties. Landlords may need expanded rights to access their property to enhance its energy and water efficiency.
Less Waste
Increased Warranties: Extend mandatory warranty periods for goods. This discourages cheap & shoddy goods from being sold and then going to landfill in 13 months.
Standardisation: Often working goods have to be discarded because they are now ‘non-standard’ and cannot be used with anything else.
All mobile phones will soon use a standard charger using a micro-USB plug. This approach should be applied to many other products to reduce the waste stream.
More Recycling
* A deposit levy on containers as is done in SA.
* Controls on the materials used in products and their labelling to assist with recycling. Ideally this would match standards that are in use or being developed in the EU and other regions.
* Recycle levies on some hard-to-recycle products which fund recycling. This may apply to tyres, for example.
Water Buyback
To a large extent this should not be necessary as the water price created through swapping various taxes on to water should reduce demand. However, some water buy-back may still be required.
Farm Exit Packages
This still needs to be considered where farms now have little or no economic potential. The affected farmers could be paid to help re-plant their land with native vegetation.
Removing market barriers to water trade
The existing state imposed restrictions on water trade are hindering environmental water purchase, restricting economic activity and slowing structural adjustment. The 4 percent cap on permanent trade out of irrigation districts is rapidly losing support among the communities it was intended to protect and should be removed at the earliest opportunity.
Reform of the Water Act
In 2007/08, the environment received less than 7 percent of its small entitlement overall, compared with 30 to 35 percent allocations received by instigators from much larger entitlements. Clearly the Water Act is failing to protect our rivers.
Amendments are needed to give surface and groundwater systems statutory protection and to make this enforceable.
No More Dams
We do not support building more dams – especially on the few remaining undamaged rivers like the Mitchell. This is just causing more damage to keep feeding wasteful ways. We have enough half empty dams already.
No related links for this post.
