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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 03 Hansard (Wednesday, 10 March 2004) . . Page.. 998 ..

the moratorium in place. The community spoke and the community won, and that is probably a good thing. But what really is important is the work of the Conder landcare group and the ownership that part of the community now has for the wetlands and, obviously, for the bits of Conder 4A that they now care for.

As a minister it was a great pleasure to start that process. Mr Wood opened the final Conder wetlands project a couple of years later when it was completed. It is interesting to see these things as they progress across terms and across governments. The big winner in that was the community. The big loser in the whole process, from what I have seen since this government came to office, is the environment with the attitude of the Minister for Planning, Mr Corbell. Minister Corbell quotes political expediency as to why people change their views. He is the most politically expedient and inept planning minister that we have ever had. Mr Wood was the initial environment minister, wasn’t he?

Mr Wood: In this government, yes.

MR SMYTH: Chief Minister Stanhope then took that portfolio. Mr Corbell talked about political expediency. I can remember listening to Phillip Toyne at what is now Justice Hope Park—he had been invited, I think, by Mr Corbell—tell us about how important all parts of the remnant woodland were and how important it was to save all of them no matter how degraded, how poor or how badly located or situated. I can remember watching the knowing, nodding Mr Corbell agreeing with Phillip Toyne about how important it was to save every last tree because there is so little left. Today we heard the most extraordinary piece of political expediency from the minister. He did a backflip. He now decides what is and isn’t correct. He is almost above the control of the Assembly—certainly in his attitude.

The minister said that this government has put 1,000 hectares back into the reserve system at the cost of some half a billion dollars. That is commendable but he forgot to say that the work at Callum Brae was started under the previous government. The previous government knocked off an entire town centre. There was to be a town centre on the ACT side of the Jerrabomberra divide. All the work that we had done through the action plans, through the commitment to the environment, led us to make the announcement that that would never go ahead, that there would never be a town centre built there because of environmental considerations.

We also shifted the Gungahlin town centre. The previous Minister for the Environment, Mr Wood, saved some of the grasslands out there and we shifted the entire orientation of the centre to accommodate that. We drew the line in the sand with East O’Malley and said that the land must be saved. Not everyone wanted Justice Hope Park in North Watson saved but the vast majority of the trees were saved in a way that led to their survival. We also started work on the six suburbs that form North Gungahlin. We said that they should have more open space, more creeks and more dams and that we should save more trees, because that is important. I think it is important to put that into the context of the 1,000 hectares that Mr Corbell claims. Others have started that work. I am not aware of the progress of the variation to the Territory Plan to put the land formally back into the reserve system. I would be interested to know where that is. Not only were we responsible for putting the land back in; we did the monitoring work as well. We were the first jurisdiction to come up with action plans for endangered ecosystems or species, the first to review all those plans. That work I think was very significant in

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