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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 2 Hansard (11 March) . . Page.. 607 ..

MS TUCKER

very small, if blocks were located in this woodland environment the woodland would be destroyed by both the initial development activity and subsequent human pressure from the new occupants. We could expect to see the destruction and further fragmentation of habitat, the predation of native fauna by domestic animals, the introduction of weeds, the destruction of wildlife corridors, noise disruption to wildlife and increased road kills. The clearance of native vegetation around houses for fire control and the tendency of residents to want tidy lawns would have further impacts on nature conservation.

The paper suggests that property management agreements which are currently applied to rural leases could be applied to rural residential blocks to provide a means of ensuring appropriate land management practices, but I have serious doubts about whether that would work. I doubt that Environment ACT has the resources to develop property management agreements for over 200 rural residential blocks, let alone monitor and enforce them. I believe that the paper too easily dismisses these environmental problems by stating that more environmental evaluations and the development of environmental standards would be undertaken for the potential sites. That is the wrong approach to environmental impact assessment. Comprehensive environmental assessment should be an integral part of any preliminary feasibility study into particular land uses and should not be left until after a decision on the use of that land has been made, otherwise environmental assessment just becomes a process of trying to fix up the problems arising from decisions to proceed with a development that, perhaps, should not have been agreed to in the first place. It is becoming a common theme in debate in this place that the Government takes this approach.

Regarding the locations identified for rural residential development, there are a number of inconsistencies in these assessments which lead me to believe that the locations were determined not by a rigorous and comprehensive assessment process, but according to a predetermined government agenda. Melrose Valley has been identified as a preferred location for rural residential development, yet in the body of the report it is stated that extensive areas of the valley are steep, rocky and subject to land management problems and that providing an access road would be difficult and expensive. Pages 47 and 48 of the report basically give all the reasons why Melrose Valley is not suitable for rural residential development, yet they appear to have been overridden in the conclusions. Of course, the selection of Melrose Valley just happens to coincide with the Government's response to the Rural Policy Taskforce report, which pre-empted by some nine months the release of the Government's discussion paper.

Melrose Valley stands out particularly because it is currently a working rural property and in the Rural Policy Taskforce report it was recommended that such properties be given 99-year leases. However, in the Government's response to the task force's report, the Melrose Valley was the only location that was excluded from consideration for a 99-year lease because of the Government's intention to undertake a study into rural residential development. Mr Smyth did give me today an answer to a question I asked some time ago regarding that matter; but once again, unfortunately, the answer has not actually been to my question. Basically, the Government is saying that the areas identified by the Government in its response to the task force report for further detailed planning studies form an arc around the existing urban areas of Canberra. I was asking about the area that was actually excluded, which was Melrose Valley.

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