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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 14 Hansard (10 December) . . Page.. 4889 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

and I gave the reasons. That takes me to reason No. 471. Reason No. 471 is what I believe is the risk associated with tree preservation, and that is that people will be reluctant to plant trees for fear that they will grow and they will not be able to cut them down. Reason No. 472, Madam Deputy Speaker, is to do with this piece of legislation. It seeks to preserve native trees but not preserve exotic trees that are part and parcel of almost all of inner Canberra, in particular, and which are very important.

The Greens have raised this issue. On a number of occasions over the last three years situations have come to my attention where tree preservation orders would have been a good thing. Therefore, I will not be going into this next election saying that I will oppose tree preservation orders; rather, that I will consider the issue on merit. I think the Greens have put up some particularly good arguments in their lobbying and therefore I am prepared to consider it.

My other reasons are probably largely covered by the first 469 reasons. I think tabling this legislation last week and then dealing with it this week really is not a viable thing, not just because of the lack of consultation because there are times when I believe it is reasonable to deal with legislation quickly. In this case there are some complexities about the legislation, not the least of which is the one I mentioned - that it covers only native trees. There are other complexities as well that we have not had time to deal with. Not only should I have time to deal with them, but also members of the public generally ought to have the opportunity to see the legislation and to comment on it. As Mr Osborne pointed out in reasons Nos 1 to 469, they have not had that opportunity. I will be interested to hear what other arguments are put up. I will be interested to hear Mr Corbell give reason No. 473.

MR CORBELL (6.17): Mr Moore has not exactly pre-empted my comments in this debate. The Labor Opposition supports in principle the concept of a tree preservation scheme. We believe it is appropriate. We believe it is an important aspect to have in a city such as Canberra. It is a surprise that we do not have a formal scheme in place for protecting significant trees or trees over a certain size in residential areas. It is inconsistent in the context of legislation that protects trees generally in the Territory in that we do have legislation that protects native trees on rural leases. We also have provision in our legislation to protect trees on blocks of land that are being developed as part of a land development proposal. For instance, there is a provision, under the Land (Planning and Environment) Act, to protect native trees on blocks of land being developed in areas of Gungahlin. But there is a loophole. When that land stops being part of a land development project and becomes part of a residential lease, when someone moves into the house, those trees are no longer protected. All of this effort may have gone into protecting a tree on land when the land is being developed as part of a residential subdivision, but once the houses are built you can chop the thing down. Mr Speaker, we believe that that is a little inconsistent, and it is certainly worth further consideration.

However, we believe that the points that have been raised by Mr Osborne and Mr Moore in relation to public awareness and education on this issue are also important. The Labor Party does not believe that this Bill should be progressed beyond a general debate today, for that reason amongst others. There are a number of other reasons that we do want to raise. In particular, there is the issue of the structure of the proposed

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