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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 3 Hansard (12 March) . . Page.. 910 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

argument for that, even if the trees themselves are of very high quality. Protecting them would not improve connectivity with, say, adjacent nature park areas; nor would it ensure an effective representative protection of this type of community.

I will use the Nettlefold Street trees as an example. There you have a very small stand of trees in the middle of a developed area with no connectivity to any larger area of that community, and Ms Tucker suggests that those are the sorts of areas that should be protected.

Aesthetically, they are very attractive places. And aesthetically, the government is responding to that by ensuring that as many of the high quality trees as possible are retained. But the stand does not have high ecological value in itself, and that is essentially the issue that needs to be addressed in the motion today.

I foreshadow a motion that I have circulated, and which I will move later, which proposes to amend Ms Tucker's motion. The intent of the amendment is to make a point that areas should be given protection when they are in sound ecological condition, relatively intact and effectively connected with other similar areas of habitat-because the real value of protection is ensuring a viable ecosystem overall. The real value in protection is to ensure that you have an ecosystem that is functioning well and delivers a habitat for birds, animals and the flora in those ecosystems themselves. That is the intent of my amendment.

I will just take a step back and look more broadly at the strategic issues here. It is an unfortunate fact of planning in the ACT that many areas were designated for residential land use that have subsequently been identified as having high conservation qualities. The most pressing front in this regard is the north Gungahlin area. North Gungahlin, by its very topography, is the type of landscape that, prior to European settlement, had an extensive yellow box/red gum grassy woodland community on it.

Because of the land management practices of the territory since it was created, there have not been the same incentives to clear land as there have been in other jurisdictions, even in areas immediately outside the ACT. We have been fortunate, in that these stands have remained and there are remnant areas of this community in place. But it presents our community with a real difficulty. We have predicated-and all the conservative assumptions have been-that for the next 25 to 30 years, greenfields land release will be mostly satisfied by the construction of Gungahlin. Having effectively completed the first stage of development of Gungahlin, we are now turning to north Gungahlin. That is exactly where these ecological communities are.

So we have some choices. Do we continue development in north Gungahlin, or do we say the environmental issues are more important than the social and the economic-which is what any sustainability debate needs to be about? And do we accept that the trade-off for protecting large stands in that area is urban growth in another direction or urban consolidation or some balance between those? That is the question we now face.

An issue in the very real and immediate future that is worth highlighting is land release in Forde/Bonner. Forde/Bonner does have significant areas of yellow box/red gum grassy woodland in it, but it does not have connectivity with broader areas of that

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