Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak in support of the Appropriation (Water Entitlements and Home Insulation) Bill 2009-2010 and the Appropriation (Water Entitlements) Bill 2009-2010. Before I go to the heart of the legislation before the House, I want to address some of the remarks made by the member for Dunkley and the member for Mayo in their contributions. It is good to see that they are supportive of this legislation and that they are not revisiting past opposition performances like those from the mid-seventies! I am comforted by that. However, I did want to address the member for Dunkley’s comments. He seemed to focus on Parliament House like a bogong moth, on some of the things that were not happening in Parliament House. I have only been here two years, so I do not have the knowledge of the place that he does, but I thought that Parliament House was run by the parliament. So it is actually run by the member for Dunkley, not by the Rudd government—unless you are looking at changing those things!

This building celebrated its 20th birthday last year. It was designed in the seventies and built in the eighties, and, as seventies buildings go, it is actually an incredibly energy efficient building. It helps when you put a building inside a hill; it makes for a lot of energy efficiencies. Obviously, some of the technology from the seventies and eighties has changed, and a lot has been done over the years. After the member for Dunkley made his comments, I had a look at the Department of Parliamentary Services’ energy and greenhouse gas emissions webpage, which is publicly available. It shows that, despite having more sitting hours this year, greenhouse gas emissions have actually gone down.

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