Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bonner for her question. I know she has a strong interest in this issue. The fact is that evidence based policy is important to the Rudd government, including when it comes to a comprehensive environmental and climate change agenda. I think it is worth while pointing out that there is a new approach afoot in the democracies of developing and developed countries which says that we will have a greater emphasis on rigorous public policymaking informed by available and credible evidence. It is a similar approach to that we have seen from the Obama administration in their environment and climate change agenda—guided by evidence, guided by the science.

The government are committed to driving reforms based on evidence in tackling genuine priorities in our environment, for example, through targets identified under the Caring for our Country program. Under Caring for our Country we published a business plan last year and called for projects that would address clear evidence based targets. This year my colleague Minister Burke and I have approved over $400 million worth of projects to address these targets. We are driving reforms as well through the National Strategy on Energy Efficiency, which I detailed yesterday to the Built Environment Meets Parliament conference, laying out this government’s energy efficiency agenda.

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