- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples
- Air Quality
- Animal Welfare
- Arts
- Asbestos
- Biodiversity
- Biofuels
- Bushfire Risk Management
- Children and young people
- Climate Change and Energy
- Coal and Coal Seam Gas
- Coastal management
- Coastal Sand mining and extraction
- Disabilities
- Drugs and harm minimisation
- Early Childhood Education
- Education
- Electoral and Funding Reform
- Environment Impact Assessment and Pollution Control
- Estuary
- Firearms
- Forests
- Gaming Machines
- Genetic Engineering in Food and Crops
- Genetically Engineered Organisms in Production of Pharmaceuticals
- Health
- Heritage
- Housing
- Industrial relations
- Industry
- Justice
- Juvenile Justice
- Local Government
- Marine Environment
- Multiculturalism
- National Parks
- Older People
- Planning and Infrastructure
- Public Ownership
- Public Sector Social and Environmental Responsibility
- Recreation and Sport
- Regional Development
- Rural Land Use
- Rural young people
- Sexuality and Gender Identity
- Social Equity
- Tourism
- Transport
- Voluntary Euthanasia
- Waste Elimination
- Water (rural and agricultural)
- Water (urban)
- Wetlands
- Women
- Work
- Worker's Compensation
POLICY SUMMARY
To read the full details of the Greens NSW Air Quality Policy click on the orange download button on the right.
Making sure that we have clean air to breathe should be a given. Yet the Greens regularly work with a wide range of urban and regional communities experiencing reduced air quality. From motorways and tunnels to wood fires, dirty industries and coal mining, NSW faces serious air quality problems that are not being adequately monitored or addressed by government.
Clean air is a public, natural asset that shouldn't be privatised by giving private interests the right to pollute. Air pollution is harmful to the health of people, animals, ecosystems and environments. We need strictly enforced air quality standards for both indoor and outdoor environments, which recognise that some pollutants have no known safe level.
In homes and workplaces near main roads, and in areas where people use wood heating, where coal mining or agricultural burning takes place, or downwind of emissions from heavy industry, air pollution by particulates poses a serious health problem. Fine particulates (less than 2.5 micrometres) are closely linked to adverse health effects including premature death. There is no known safe level.
The Greens NSW believe:
- The principles of environmental democracy require governments to carry out regular monitoring of the major air pollutants and air toxins, publish the results and estimate the cost to society of exposure to air pollution.
- Consistent with the polluter pays principle, polluters should contribute to the health and environmental costs of their pollution.
- Government policies should aim to minimise air pollution at source, rather than focus on dilution and dispersion technique.
- Air quality targets should be set, and incentives introduced, so that best practice is adopted across the wide spectrum of human activities.
- Emissions from new developments should be considered in the context of existing air quality and future needs
Read the full Greens NSW Air Quality policy pdf.
