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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 10 Hansard (14 October) . . Page.. 3138 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

This development would also create a barrier to the movement of wildlife and recreational users between the nature park on Red Hill and the rest of the golf course reserve. The Federal Golf Club is required under its lease to permit free public access through the course, which this development would compromise. Whilst the golf course is not part of the Red Hill Nature Reserve, it is geographically integrated into the reserve and connects this reserve with parkland and urban open spaces in Hughes and Garran.

Canberra's planning has a tradition of concentrating its urban development in distinct suburbs and towns which are integrated into the open space running around and through the urban area. The open space around Canberra is not all pristine bushland. Much is just grass with a few trees, but it does serve a useful aesthetic and recreational function for residents and not just an ecological function. It is therefore a poor argument to say that just because this part of the golf course is degraded it does not need to stay as open space. It also ignores the fact that degraded areas can always be rehabilitated.

I am also very concerned about the proposal to include a 9-hectare area of the club's lease in the hills, ridges and buffer areas land use policy with a public land nature reserve overlay. This proposal has been put forward as some form of compensation for the loss of the land where the houses would go, but it raises serious issues about how our nature reserves are managed. Whilst this action is described as extending the nature conservation area of the Red Hill reserve, the area would stay within the lease of the golf course. We would end up with the curious situation of privately leased land being called a public nature reserve.

Whilst I am glad that the golf club has offered to manage this land as a nature reserve, it represents a questionable government shift in the preferred management of nature conservation areas from public to private hands, which sets a dangerous precedent. Is it going to be the case in the future that no more areas will be added to the ACT's nature reserves unless a private organisation is prepared to manage this land? If the land has value as a nature conservation reserve, it should be taken out of the golf course lease and truly incorporated within the boundaries of the Red Hill reserve.

I also question whether the golf club has a right to develop this land when the land was given to it specifically for recreational activities. Under the ACT's leasehold system, land is granted to lessees for specific purposes to lessen the possibility of land speculation. If the area proposed for the housing development or any other part of the club's grounds is not needed by the club, it should be returned to the ACT Government for the benefit of the whole ACT community, rather than being used by the golf club for speculative land ventures that are unrelated to the primary purpose of the golf club.

As I have said already, it is not sufficient for the Government to say that this type of development is okay because similar developments have occurred at other golf courses. Those redevelopments of concessional leases have also been controversial. I seem to recall that consideration of a very similar proposal relating to housing at the Yowani golf course was actually the trigger for the Stein inquiry into the administration of ACT leasehold in 1995. In fact, Stein concluded:

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