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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 5 Hansard (8 May) . . Page.. 1758 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

progress indicators for monitoring and reporting are being worked on. Meanwhile, the evidence of social and environmental considerations being given appropriate emphasis in the government's decision making is pretty thin on the ground.

The first towards sustainability report is to be prepared during 2003-04. I wonder how it will look at some of the short-sighted decisions in this budget. They will be water under the bridge by then and perhaps there will be further promise of a fresh approach to be taken at some time in the future. It is a bit like St Augustine praying, "Lord, please make me chaste, but not just yet."

This budget is not the big win for the environment that the government has tried to portray. Only days after releasing Woodlands for wildlife and the draft ACT lowland woodland conservation strategy, which identifies areas of high conservation value and emphasises the importance of preserving them and their connectivity, the government announced that several such high-value areas in east O'Malley, Forde and Bonner are to be sacrificed to development in the land release program. The protection of Gooroo and Callum Brae is very good, but it should not be trumpeted as some bold conservation achievement that delivers what we should reasonably expect. Who knows? We might have got that even under the Liberals.

Labor's environmental credibility is not looking good at this stage. The woodland conservation strategy development process is still under way. The document is still in draft form and further consultation and refinement are planned before it becomes a final action plan around the end of the year. This draft in no way gives the government the all-clear to say that it has protected the most valuable part and can therefore plunder the rest.

I think that it is very important that we remember how much is left of this ecological community in the south-east region. I remember having this debate with the previous Liberal government in relation to Conder. It was trying to argue that it was being reasonable and that the response was balanced because not all of the grassy woodland was being used. The thing you have to remember about grassy woodland is that only about 5 per cent of it is left in the region. You cannot get away with saying that you are going to use only 25 per cent of what is left because there is so little left. We have to keep going back to the fundamental reality that we cannot afford to lose any more.

By making this land release announcement, the government has ensured that it will now have ongoing fights within the community as it moves against each area of high conservation woodland and sets in train further destruction of important wildlife habitat and biodiversity. The positive environmental initiatives in the budget pale into insignificance against that. With PALM considering Stromlo Forest for residential development following the bushfires, why are we rushing in to build Forde and Bonner, rather than one of the other proposed suburbs in north Gungahlin?

Where we do appear to have a good new initiative, it is difficult to establish what is being delivered. For example, there has been a new allocation for weeds work, after a discontinuation of earlier weeds work because of the fires. A new program has been provided to control weeds in the burnt out areas, but should the former work have been discontinued, or has it been discontinued? How do we compare what was provided for weeds work in the last budget with what is now being provided? When I looked at that,

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