21 November 2006

Richard Mulcahy - Ecowarrior

| johnboy
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With more time on his hands on the backbench the Legislative Assembly’s hardest working member, Richard Mulcahy, has had time to come up with an environment policy.

Sadly it’s a stupid, statist one.

“I hope a programme can be developed that will incorporate practical measures to reduce energy wastage and costs, including close involvement by government in encouraging and supporting sensible environmental measures. We have to ensure the community gets behind environmental policy and a ‘penalty’ approach is not the way to secure public support.”

Or you could put appropriate price indicators in place and let people figure out the best way for themselves to conserve resources.

Sadly that’s much less fun for MLA’s than having Government programs reaching into every aspect of our lives to reach arbitrarily defined KPI’s.

The ABC reports that the Greens’ Deb Foskey thinks it doesn’t go far enough.

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Increasing the cost of water, does not seem to be a good.

Simply, who would get this money ACTEWAGL? Seepi’s pensionors are going to like having to pay extra to a private company, just to shower. Their share holders would love it though.

May be the ACT government could get this wind fall, instead? That would be awesome we could have a water tax too, mind you they already tax the beer.

Is there such thing as “far enough” for the Greens?

Nothing new here, most telecommunications and utilities providers in Australia have been providing rebate based pay-per-use with a initial period of free usage for the last decade.

Still won’t solve the problem though, the Government needs to look at the other 95% of resource usage, rather than the 5% it currently has under it’s overlegislated grip of control.

And no matter how environmentally friendly it may be, I’m still not considering drinking my own wee, that would be conceding defeat on sooo many levels.

So give ’em a rebate, or have a flat fee for the first x kilolitres.

If you want to have a pool or a garden full of thirsty exotics (or a teenage daughter…), then pay for it.

Seepi, go read a secondary school economics textbook. We all know who votes green.

Yes but water is not caviar – or even petrol.
A certain level of water usage is essential, rather than a luxury to be used only by the rich.

Pay for what you consume Seepi,

yes that means those who can pay more can consume more and if you don’t like that then you’ve got bigger problems than greenhouse.

Seepi, the pensioners who live in public housing in the ACT don’t currently pay for their water so they have no pricing indicators at all. This means they may leave their showers running for as long as the hot holds out.

I still think that if water cost so much that a dripping tap had to be fixed immediately by a mansion dwellers to save money, then the pensioners will be not taking showers to save money. And you can introduce all sorts of rebates etc – that would require endless extra staff (a new ‘water rebate’ dept for Centrelink?), as well as corruption and water theft. And you are against over regulation in most other areas?

Mulcahy’s media release seems pretty fuzzy. From what I can make of it, he’s merely advocating some kind of govt information campaign.

Good God, Johnboy, the clear and fatal flaw in your plan is that the requirement for additional bureacrats to set the fees and charges would be, errrrrrrr, nil, because they already do it. The number of bureaucrats required to closely involve themselves “in encouraging and supporting sensible environmental measures” would be at least 17.

Where would the sort of thinking you’re encouraging end us all?

I don’t believe that stringent measures on urban water consumption will have much, if any, impact on improving overall efficiency on water consumption.

My understanding is that rural water consumption constitutes the major problem for long-term planning.

For example; why are we growing olives in the Sourthern Tablelands, which is in drought and has a history of increasing salinity levels?

It is these sorts of questions which go to the heart of the issue

it’s a metaphor for resource consumption Thumper

Yes Seepi, rich people have more and better stuff than poor people.

Please try and get used to this basic precept of all human societies (even under the soviets where wealth was better measured in corrupt influence) before making a suggestion.

There are, however, myriad ways of rebating, exempting and pensioning the least advantaged so that they have a decent standard of living.

it seems to have escaped your notice, but things already cost this thing called money.

my point is to make the environmental cost a larger component, which will in turn lead us to favour more environmentally friendly options.

A good example is a leaking tap in an apartment. Under current water costs there’s no real benefit to fixing it.

Under the Mulcahy plan the Government would give you some money if you fixed your leaking tap, thereby REWARDING having a leaking tap.

Under my way the cost of that leaking tap would encourage you to do something about it.

Pensioners and furry bunny wabbits with leaking taps could make similar choices for themselves.

How can you have an appropriate price for water, gas or electricity, that pensioners/single parents and students can afford to pay, and that will be any kind of incentive for millionaires to stop heating their outdoor paving areas etc.

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