Greens dismiss “sandbags and roads” budget

Submitted by Lynn MacLaren on Fri, 21/05/2010 - 10:00

"$60 million on bitumen and infrastructure in our National Parks will do nothing to protect WA’s unique and threatened biodiversity,” said Greens spokesperson on the environment Giz Watson MLC.

"There is no money in the budget to expand the conservation estate instead there will be more tourist pressure and more roads. The community expects the environment budget to be spent on conservation not road building," Ms Watson said.

"Also the budget has a pittance for an ill-considered net feed-in tariff system for renewable energy, and nothing else of consequence to drive WA’s carbon emissions down."

"The budget for the Department of Environment and Conservation shows that when it comes to the environment this Government has only two messages; let’s build roads to existing national parks but not expand the conservation estate, and let’s make plans to react to a rising sea level but not do anything about the cause," added Ms Watson.