Page 3719 - Week 12 - Thursday, 21 October 1993
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The officials were able to display and explain to us very easily that the gardeners in the houses over the road from the forest can invoke the most amazing damage on the native forest simply by the choices they make in planting their gardens. When we think of the Canberra Nature Park, which to our enormous advantage exists as a system of reserves throughout the ACT, with urban development on their fringe in almost every case, and when we think of the depth of development in Tuggeranong and the nearness of Namadgi, we can relate fairly well to examples we saw and to the value of a paper such as this and the subsequent report when it is produced and people start to consider it.
When the inquiry was first taken on by this committee, I and, I think, a lot of other people imagined that the major thrust of attention would be on the animal side. To some degree the media has complimented us by performing in exactly that way. I was a little sorry to see, on the release of this paper, that the headlines were screaming about the recommendations we were considering relating to domestic cats. The poor old cat owner out there started to get terribly upset and agitated. While I can understand why the media may have done that - it is an emotive subject; there are lots of people with cats they dearly love - there are equally important or more important issues in this paper that deserve attention.
Mr Wood: It was not accurate reporting, was it?
MS ELLIS: No, it was a bit misleading, Mr Wood. Anybody would think we had done a report on cats, from the way the media reported this discussion paper.
Ms Follett: That is the way my cat saw it.
MS ELLIS: I should note that there are a few cat owners in this place. An important aspect of a discussion paper such as this is that it brings to the attention of our community issues they may not even realise they should be concerned about. I use myself as an example. I moved into my house in Kambah 11 years ago. It is on a large corner block and I was thrilled. I thought, "Wow, isn't this great! I will have lots of birds because I have two huge cotoneaster plants". I nurtured them and pruned them and watched them grow. But 10 or 11 years ago I do not think very many people, including me, were aware that cotoneasters were not the greatest of plants to have. When you drive up to the Red Hill lookout through the Canberra Nature Park area, you can see these things invading areas of our native park. I must also put the record straight and say that in recent months - in fact, since this inquiry was instituted - I have had those huge cotoneasters removed, and I am feeling fairly virtuous about it.
The point is that, unless people are aware that the choices they make can impact on their environment, they are not to be blamed for what they are doing. By the same token, members of the committee, in discussions on that aspect of this paper, also agreed that we do not mean that, if you have a hedge around a house in Ainslie, say, that has been there for 30 years or more and it happens to be cotoneaster or hawthorn, we expect you to rip it out. We need to have a sensible approach to this. We need to encourage nurseries and plant distributors in general to think very carefully about what they have on offer.
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