Page 618 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 20 May 1992
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Mr Wood: It is the longer-term heritage we were thinking about, actually.
MRS CARNELL: Fair enough. I want to finish off on who Mr Russell is and what is being done to him by this lack of confidence, this ongoing barrage of pressure placed upon this identity. Mr Russell has said that he has made as much as $10,000 a year from his cattle in good years when he had the larger space, when he could have more cattle and so on. Let us be fair; nobody gets rich on $10,000 a year. Because of the pressure that has been placed upon him, because now he is not confident that with the 15 cattle that he is supposedly allowed to keep, with calves, he is going to be able to make this venture viable for him, he has, of recent days, had to inquire about a pension - something that he believed he would never have to do. He explained to me at length the problems that he had in doing that.
We have here an old gentleman, an elderly gentleman, whose independence is probably the most important thing to him. His health really is not good enough for him to be running around on Red Hill after the cattle; but, equally, that is amazingly important to him and it should be amazingly important to our community. Bureaucratic inflexibility and interference with people like this should be something that this new Assembly should abhor. I believe that it is absolutely essential for Charlie's cows to be able to remain there for as long as possible, with flexibility to allow him to keep enough cows to make it a financially viable proposition and not to be harassed.
MR WESTENDE (11.09): Madam Speaker, as a resident of the area - I have lived there for some 11 years - I have seen quite a bit of Charlie and his cattle. The Minister would be well aware, as Mrs Carnell has pointed out, that on 15 cows you cannot make a livelihood. Maybe that is one of the reasons why Charlie is behind, if he is behind.
I have personal experience of a bushfire going through the Red Hill area and that bushfire was nowhere near as fierce inside the area fenced off by Charlie and grazed by his cows as it was outside. The Minister spoke about trees. By some strange coincidence, or was it by the good grazing habits, the trees inside the fenced area were hardly touched by the fire, while trees outside, in fact right in my front yard, caught fire because of the long grass on the other side of the road. When you are there trying to put a fire out, it brings the truth home to you. I can assure you that it is a frightening experience for people who have not grown up in the bush or maybe have not lived in a rural situation or have come from a country where bushfires are virtually unknown.
The Government resumed the lease in Dairy Flat Road so that it could teach schoolchildren the values of the rural lifestyle and the rural economy. Here we have, right inside the area already, an educational aid. As Mrs Carnell pointed out, schoolchildren from Red Hill walk up there with their teachers, who give their students lessons on rural life. Our heritage is not only about buildings but people. In a city as new as Canberra there is a tendency for us to brush aside aspects of the abundant heritage in our immediate vicinity. Perhaps this is due to the fact that only a small proportion of the population in Canberra comes from the rural area. Lots of them are transplants from Melbourne and other cities. I, for one, am a strong believer in forging ahead and paving the way for future generations, and we must always acknowledge and respect those who have done the same for us.
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