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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 6 Hansard (14 June) . . Page.. 1746 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

Ms Tucker also has an amendment that after the words "residential development" will substitute "and change to hills, ridges and buffers". Obviously there is some conflict about where it should end up, how it should end up and what classification it should end up under. So a review is an entirely appropriate way to go. But it should be a real review, not a Labor Party Clayton's review with a predetermined outcome.

The government would support a review. We have said all along that we would do further work before this land was released. That is why we have the land release program. We put it out years in advance so that people will know about the possible land release in future years.

With the small amendment I will move, the government will support this motion. We believe it is an appropriate way to go forward. I do not have any quotes from Mr Toyne as Mr Corbell did. I appreciate the words of Mr Toyne at the rally at north Watson. I was at the rally, and afterwards I told Mr Toyne what the government had done. I mentioned those things that really get into Mr Corbell's craw-the fact that we had put land aside; that we had protected whatever we thought was appropriate and worth saving.

One of the dilemmas is putting back into reserves land that should not be there. I talk to the rangers often. They say that many areas with no conservation values whatsoever should not be in the reserve system. If we add other areas, all we do is put an increasing burden on existing resources without making sure that we look after the other areas.

I sought clarification of some of the numbers that Mr Corbell used. I am told that the trees have not been formally dated but that some are at least 200 years old. We know this because they were there when settlers started moving into the area. I also asked how much yellow box was in existence at the time of settlement. The belief is that there was originally 32,000 hectares. About 8,000 hectares are left. Of this, 21 per cent is in reserves, 36 per cent in non-urban areas, 20 per cent in rural land use zoning, 14 per cent in broadacre and 9 per cent in urban land use zoning.

We have done the right thing. We have a process that leads to the decision. We have a team of experts who, independent of government, give advice. We make sure that we negotiate with the community. As Mr Corbell can testify, one day I happened to bump into him when he was looking at the east O'Malley site. We had said that we would put aside a certain amount of it. The community thought that was good but wanted a little bit more. I ended up there one Saturday morning to have a look at what was going on and ran into a group of the Friends of Grasslands and, having looked at the site, we negotiated on what it was appropriate to save. Again, a little bit extra land was then put back into the reserve system. Why? Because the government believed it was appropriate. We also believe that you should have a process, and we believe that the process we followed here-taking advice, doing the studies-is the way we should go about it.

Mr Speaker, I move the following amendment:

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