Page 4475 - Week 15 - Thursday, 22 November 1990
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The Parks and Conservation Service needs to look very carefully at the protection of anything within its areas, as is the case with the Namadgi park, to ensure that vandalism does not occur. I am given to understand, from somebody with great expertise and qualifications in this area, that just stopping vehicle access to such places has been proved throughout the world to be highly successful in stopping vandalism, because apparently the people who are likely to vandalise a place like those tracking stations are not likely to walk in for a kilometre or two kilometres.
There are many other areas of historical significance within the park that still require the same sort of protection. I think it is important that we learn a lesson from this and ensure that such vandalism does not occur again. It is an issue that the Parks and Conservation Service, in particular, should be looking at carefully to assess how it can avoid the same sort of thing happening again.
Except for that one minor point - I make the point that it is, in one sense, minor - which is out of character, it seems to me, with the way in which this service deals with Canberra, I accept and agree with the positive comments of Mr Collaery and Mr Jensen in this area, but I draw attention to the area in which there is room for improvement.
MRS GRASSBY (11.56): Mr Speaker, I too rise to commend the Parks and Conservation Service, particularly one group which, when I was a Minister, I found did an excellent job. That is not to say that they all did not, but I felt that one particular group was terribly dedicated to its work. It was the park rangers at Tidbinbilla who made such an effort to make visitors who came to this city feel so welcome and who went out of their way to show them everything in the Tidbinbilla park. They could tell you exactly what trees the koalas were in so that you would not miss them; they could tell you at exactly what time the birds were coming down to be fed and, if you missed out on it, they would make a large effort to try to find what you wanted to look at.
I was very impressed with this group of people when I was a Minister and felt that they were unsung heroes. Because we do not have any heavy industry and there is not a lot of light industry, we need lots of tourists. When I have travelled I have heard people all over Australia comment that the park rangers at Tidbinbilla were the most polite and helpful people they had ever met. So I congratulate these people. But, as with everything else, they are only as good as the person to whom they are responsible, so I commend the head of their department who has done a very good job in parks and conservation and helped to make this city one of the garden cities of Australia. With a bit of luck, we may end up having no fences so that we do not change it any further.
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