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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Wednesday, 3 March 2004) . . Page.. 684 ..

My motion today calls on the government to prohibit cat ownership in the new suburbs of Forde and Bonner. While this is a first in the ACT, it is not a new concept. Yarrowlumla Shire and Tallaganda Shire, for instance, have established a ban on cats in newly created residential areas in a couple of cases where residential development is close to environmentally sensitive areas.

Forde and Bonner both adjoin the Mulligans Flat Nature Reserve and the Gooroo reserve. These two are among the best preserved areas of woodland complex in the region. The woodland complex includes open forest, grassy woodland and native grasslands. It is an important habitat and is home to small populations of two vulnerable birds—the hooded robin and the brown treecreeper—and others with declining populations.

Because the two new suburbs will be so close to the nature reserve, it is important that the impact of roaming cats is minimised as far as possible. Because these suburbs are new, there is an opportunity to use the most straightforward means of protection, which is to ban cat ownership. As the blocks were scheduled for auction in March or April, any decision about cat protection measures should have been made now. There is now different information on that; we are being told that the land is not going to be auctioned so soon.

But I still want to see this debate finished today because it is an important issue that has been delayed for too long, and the community needs to know what this Assembly thinks about it in as much time as possible before the auction occurs. The types of restriction that will be put in place in the new suburbs need to be advertised as soon as possible, even if there is a delay in the auction—as one minister’s office is saying, although the other minister’s office does not seem to be sure.

ACTPLA have advertised an information night for this week about the new suburbs, so that is definitely occurring. The agenda for that meeting includes the relationship with adjacent land uses, so it is very important to have a definite position from the government before they have this public meeting.

I do not think that anyone here should need to be convinced about the importance of conserving the remaining grassy woodlands in the ACT region, although, sadly, this does not seem to have informed decisions about land developments, Forde and Bonner included. The Greens do not believe that these suburbs should have gone ahead, precisely because they are so close to the reserve.

Cats are one impact; others include people walking through, dogs being walked in the area, invasive weeds and fire protection activities. In addition to being very popular pets or companion animals, cats are very effective predators. The diet of roaming domestic cats has been studied. While within suburbs they prey mostly on other introduced animals, such as rats and house mice, but when roaming they consume a range of native species.

Cats in suburbs near nature reserves will have a significant effect on native animals, particularly where there are small and vulnerable populations. It is important to note that the two vulnerable bird species are largely ground feeders and are known to build their

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