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MR MOORE: No doubt Mr Berry will raise that. I am very happy to stand up and explain clearly why it is that I believe that we should achieve this by encouraging people, as we have effectively, instead of by using the approach we would expect from the hard-left wing of the Labor Party, who always want to have everything down in rules and regulations and have everybody forced to do what they want them to do. What we have here is a sensible approach that encourages people, an approach that has worked for a long time, and I certainly am prepared to support it, with the reservation that if Ms Horodny is prepared to introduce, as she says, a more practical solution for protecting specific trees that have a high conservation value, rather than all native trees, including the Cootamundra wattles and so forth, we will have a sensible piece of legislation that I would be prepared to look at carefully.

MR CONNOLLY (11.54): Mr Speaker, what an ironic day! On the day Mrs Carnell's axe is to fall on the budget, we have Michael Moore earning himself the name Michael the Axeman. A person who has for many years portrayed his environmental credentials to the Canberra community is now effectively voting for a provision that removes an existing protection for native timbers. This may not be a perfect provision, as Mr Berry acknowledged, and, as Ms Horodny suggested, there may be great merit in a better regime for protection of native trees. Nonetheless, it is there. Mr Moore, the Axeman, proposes two arguments against this. First, he says that it is outrageous that there is some bizarre Stalinist plot to say what you can or cannot do on your private property. I find that extraordinary for a person who properly, and we agree with him, is a great defender of the leasehold system. As Michael Moore has said repeatedly and properly, one of the great benefits of the leasehold system in the ACT is the ability it gives to control, in the public interest, what occurs on land in this Territory. So Michael's paeon of praise to the right of the individual to do what he likes in his suburban castle is totally inconsistent with his proper approach on planning.

I also find it ironic that Mr Moore is raising an in-principle objection to a law that interferes with what one does on one's property, because not only is he a strong supporter of leasehold but also he has been a strong and proper supporter of heritage legislation which says that, in certain areas of Canberra where there is significant heritage interest, what the individual does with his castle will be controlled by the state. Mr Moore says that it is outrageous that this bizarre leftist law prevents him from chopping down a gum tree, but he would properly say that there are laws that prevent him from chopping down his bathroom. He says that it is even worse because it prevents you from trimming the gum tree. It also prevents you from extending the bathroom.

Mr De Domenico: The bathroom does not grow.

Mr Moore: You listen to my debate. You are deliberately misrepresenting this.

Mr De Domenico: It is very hard to plant the bathroom.

MR CONNOLLY: Heritage protection for domestic architecture is a principle that Mr Moore not only supports, but in the past has enthused about.

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