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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (14 May) . . Page.. 1388 ..

MS HORODNY: Mr Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister for Urban Services. Mr Kaine, in recent months I have been receiving a number of reports which suggest to me that street trees and trees on public land are not being managed well by the Government. There seems to have been a recent practice that street trees are being cut down by City Parks employees at the slightest sign of disease or damage, instead of being pruned or sprayed; that street trees have been cut down in suspicious circumstances and not replaced; that street trees are not being planted in new residential areas where any residents may object; and that some of the heritage trees which are diseased and in need of attention are not being attended to or are being removed and not replaced. Given that Canberra has an international reputation as a garden city, it concerns me that the Government seems to be trying to reduce the maintenance costs of trees on public land by simply removing them altogether. Could you explain what the Government's policy is towards the maintenance of street trees and trees on public land?

MR KAINE: First of all, I would have to say that the picture painted by Ms Horodny, to my mind, is totally false. Most of the assumptions behind the question are just plain wrong. I have seen nothing that would suggest the sorts of things that she has suggested are in fact occurring.

Mr Moore: Come on, Trevor; you hate trees. Admit it.

MR KAINE: I love trees and I hug trees regularly, just as Lucy does. I do get a lot of complaints from residents, but they mainly have to do with trees that, in their view, are interfering with their amenity of life. For example, just recently I had a letter from an elderly lady. The street trees in her street were huge oak trees. They overhung her front yard by about 40 feet. Her front yard was constantly being deluged with acorns, which made it dangerous for her to walk around her front yard. She asked me what I was going to do about getting rid of the trees. I get many letters and telephone calls from residents making complaints of that kind - that street trees are damaging their driveways and their footpaths or that street trees are affecting their sewerage system. Just recently I had a complaint from a lady in Macquarie, or somewhere in that area, whose house was flooded with raw sewage because the sewerage system in front of her house, on public land, had been blocked by street trees. They are the sorts of complaints that I get.

Having got complaints of that kind, it is not my experience that the first thing that the rangers do is to go out and chop the trees down. That is the last thing that they do. They go and examine every tree about which a complaint is made, to determine whether it is still a healthy tree, whether it should be preserved, whether it can be lopped or whether the root structure can be changed without killing it off. Only in the most extreme cases are trees removed. If they are removed, they are immediately replaced. If Ms Horodny has evidence to suggest that this is not the practice that is being followed, I would be most obliged if she would give me the details and I will take each of the cases and look at them individually to see whether the administration has failed or whether it has somehow made an error. I have to say that my impression at the moment is that the picture that she paints is totally erroneous. It may be somebody's perception, but it is a totally erroneous perception.

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