Page 5910 - Week 18 - Wednesday, 11 December 1991
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responsibility was really to take a long-term view of the heritage and environmental aspects of rural leases. Insofar as we looked at the environmental aspects, the issues that were raised by the rural lessees were of great interest to us, in particular tenure, farm management and farm management techniques.
We made a series of recommendations, the first of which has to do with lease administration, and they are found at pages 9 and 10, where the committee recommended that we allocate all new and transferable agistment and other leases, apart from intermittent grazing, on an open market basis; make it a condition that in the sale of any lease the prospective purchaser provide evidence of appropriate technical, financial and other relevant resources to manage the lease effectively; examine the desirability, in terms of economic viability and potential pressures on the land environment, of amalgamating leases into larger units when areas of land are left over from other leases or as leases are surrendered; ensure that alluvial river flats and other land suitable for intensive agriculture in the ACT be retained; monitor all grazing and agistment leases and licences to prevent overstocking and act to control overstocking where it occurs; and require all lessees and agistment licensees to protect trees from ringbarking, particularly where horses are agisted.
Mr Speaker, I think the first set of recommendations that the committee provided in this report really reflect the agenda of the committee, and that is to do with the environment and our interest in looking at our environment as a whole. We in the ACT are very fortunate that we have leasehold land. As such, it is important for us to remember that, whilst the lessee has a prime interest in the land, it is still owned by the people of the ACT and, as such, the people of the ACT in general also have an interest in that land; we have a particular interest in the long-term maintenance and the long-term sustainability of that land. It is interesting how often that term "sustainability" seems to have been mentioned recently, but I think it is entirely appropriate that it is and that it continues to be, because land in particular must be able to be taken care of in a sustainable fashion.
With that in mind, Mr Speaker, I take you to one of our particular recommendations, which has to do with farm management and development plans and which you will find at page 21. The committee recommended that it be a condition of existing and prospective leases that a farm management plan covering proposals and budgets to meet lease conditions be submitted for agreement between the Government and the lessee; all farm management plans include provision for sustainable environmental goals, including land care and tree conservation and regeneration; and the Government and the lessee jointly review farm management plans at least every two years to assess performance against the objectives and, as necessary, vary plans to meet changing circumstances.
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