Page 1422 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 1 May 1990
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should be seeking to minimise. The gases that will be put out by making people travel further will harm the environment more.
MR MOORE (4.21): I thought I would open my part of the debate by reading from a letter from one constituent. It starts, "Dear Michael", and refers to a matter discussed with the Reid Residents Association and then to be followed up with the ACT branch of the Australian Conservation Foundation, which will be meeting on Wednesday evening. It continues:
I wrote to Mr Collaery expressing my views and hoping to draw his consideration to the following aspects of this matter.
(1) Residents Rally got a very solid vote from the North Canberra population because it appeared to offer consultation on local environmental issues.
Of course, this constituent is now very disappointed about this matter, and he will be further disappointed, no doubt, in terms of consultation. That is his next point:
(2) Mr Duby has provided no consultation - just a bald announcement of a "fait accompli". This is no better than previous Federal Ministers, Hodgman, Holding, etc.
(3) Demographically, North Canberra has a high aged population.
Of course, some of us are very aware of some of the difficulties that are caused to these people having to take their rubbish, because of this decision, to other tips, as outlined further in this letter. It continues:
(4) North Canberra's landscaping - a feature of the beauty and attractiveness of Canberra as a whole - is dominated by exotic deciduous trees. This is the period of greatest colour just starting now. In the next 6 weeks tons of leaves will fall on the nature strips and roads of North Canberra. In the past - with a local tip people would mostly rake the leaves, gather them and take them to Ainslie. What will happen this year?
What should have been the consideration - and what would have happened with some public consultation - is that Mr Duby could have been finding out what to do about composting those leaves, particularly the leaves of plane trees, which are very, very difficult to compost in a normal composting system. I like to compost my own oak leaves, as they make a beautiful compost. I have seen other people from Canberra coming down our streets and picking them up. But the vast majority of them are raked by residents and taken to that tip. Now, at this
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