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SPEECH BY THE PRIM KINISTERt
LAUNCH OF THE K IRONMENT MANAGEENT
INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION
PARLIAMENT HOUSE, 30 MAY 1991
Environment management is an industry that clearly will
assume greater importance in coming years. Equally clearly-,
this association we are launching today will play a key role
in ensuring the industry can meet its new responsibilities
and take up the many opportunities that will emerge.
The formation of your Association is another indication of
the rapid changes taking place in the attitudes of
Australians to environmental matters.
We are growing acutely aware that much of our landscape
bears the mark of human activity, and that this has wrought
permanent environmental change and, not infrequently,
degradation. Australians are coming to grips with our
responsibility to care for and to protect the unique
landscape that is our national home.
For industry, this poses the double challenge: to be not
only economically competitive but also ecologically
sustainable. We must conserve our finite resources, reduce
polluting emissions and preserve our natural environment in
a way which enables us to satisfy integrated economic and
environmental objectives.
Meeting this challenge will demand we seriously rethink the
way in which we, and the rest of the world, carry on our
agriculture and other primary activities, undertake our
manufacturing processes, build our homes and plan our
cities. But at the same time this double challenge brings with it
new commercial opportunities. It is highly significant
that, even in difficult economic times, Australians are
demanding more and better environmental management services.
You are, indeed, an industry with a future.
The Government has, of course, responded to changes in
community attitudes by putting in place many environmental
initiatives. For your Association, none is more important
than our initiative. to develop strategies to achieve
ecologically sustainable development.
Last year we released a paper on Ecologically Sustainable
Development as a stimulus for discussion on this issue.
Since then, nine sectoral working groups have been
established to help translate the concept of ESD into
effective strategies.
The working groups are to complete their reports by October,
for consideration at the Special Premiers' Conference
planned for November.
Given the complexity of the issues and the often conflicting
interests involved, I am encouraged by the progress that is
being made. The outcome of the process will provide a sound
basis for us to achieve ecologically sustainable
development. But clearly, government can only do so much in achieving
ESD. The bulk of the task rests with the community and the
private sector.
Environment management industries and their new
association can contribute in a major way to achieving the
goal of ecologically sustainable development and, at the
same time, helping make Australia a ' clever country'. Your
industry can help to demonstrate that ecologically
sustainable development is consistent with strong economic
growth. This is an area where Australia has the potential to develop
a world class industry, capable of producing services and
products which the rest of the world will increasingly
demand. In particular, the possibilities for developing
industry opportunities in the Asia-Pacific region are
enormous, as standards of living rise and, with them,
demands for effective environmental management.
In many ways you are the focal point for the interaction of
those who face environmental problems and those who possess
the skills, technologies or products to solve them. This
will help the industry and, through the removal of
environmental problems, it will help the people of Australia
and the world. Your Association can also be the catalyst
for the development of networks within the industry with the
size and skills to tender for, and to win, overseas
contracts. I might mention that at the meeting of my Science Council
earlier this month, industry representatives identified
several impediments to further growth of the waste
management industry in Australia an industry which is
estimated to be worth some SUS 200 billion a year world
wide. Members of the Science Council were impressed by the
export opportunities that exist if we have the courage and
the commitment to seize them.
3.
As a result of that meeting, Ministers who are members of
the Council undertook to examine carefully the
recommendations put forward by the industry. A working
party, with industry representation, will be set up to
examine the specific recommendations made to the Science
Council and to develop appropriate policy strategies to
enable Australia to capture those export opportunities.
These will then be referred to the Cabinet Sub-committee on
sectoral industry initiatives that I announced in my
Statement to Parliament on 12 March.
Progress on some matters that have been raised will not be
easy. But I want to assure you that my Government will do
all we can to remove impediments and to provide a framework
in which the full potential of the waste management industry
can be realised.
So for many reasons the creation of this Association is a
welcome development. I congratulate your Steering Committee
and interim Council for the excellent job they have done. I
appreciate also the role that has been played by the Clunies
Ross Foundation in supporting the formation of the
Association. It is with pleasure, and with good wishes for the future,
that I now launch the Environment Management Industry
Association of Australia.
I