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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Tuesday, 29 June 2004) . . Page.. 2896 ..

instance. Quite importantly, these are trees on leased land—this is government land. Given the government’s rhetoric on tree preservation, we have some significant questions on how we, as a city, are to manage our tree resources.

We get a lot of comments, when outdoors and when knocking about the shopping centres on the weekends, from constituents about how tatty the city is looking. I think generally the poor record of upkeep by this government of the city’s assets, the increase in graffiti and the impact of the drought on trees and shrubs really does affect the areas where people live. You can hear it in the way people are talking; they are not at all enamoured with the idea of the apparent decline in the look of the city.

As I mentioned before, that has a flow-on effect in terms of sheer confidence. Cities that are vibrant, lively and look good attract confidence; confidence attracts investment and it also attracts tourists. If the place is looking dowdy, or a bit daggy, people are not going to come to the ACT. That impacts on all of us in the long term. It impacts on the government in that they lose revenue, it impacts on the community in that we then cannot have essential services—or it means cutbacks in services—it impacts on young Canberrans who do not get jobs in, say, hospitality. For that matter, it impacts on older Canberrans as well.

There are a number of long-term effects that need to be taken into account. That is why you must have strategies to address this. With regard to the amount of water used in our gardens, we have announced a policy on trying to change the grasses that Canberrans grow. I think it has to be as fundamental as that. We have to go back to what is in our gardens and ask, “Is that appropriate?”

The days of planting Northern Hemisphere Kentucky Bluegrass-type blends are over. They do not work; they are not suited to the ACT. We have some very innovative people in the ACT at places like the botanical gardens, the herbarium and the CSIRO, who are setting up in small business. They are setting up grey water systems that you can put into your house to take all of the water out of the bathroom and laundry and run it into your garden automatically.

We also have some very astute inventors who have come up with systems that will harvest native seed. The problem with growing native lawns is that there has never been enough seed. We have never tackled the problem. I think the impetus is there now to tackle the problem. Unless we start planting native grasses as lawns, it is quite possible that we will just be exacerbating the current problem. It is going to take a lot of innovative thinking to address that problem.

An individual who lives just outside Yass has invented a seed separator that can separate the various sorts of native grasses to facilitate a store of the Microlina seeds that work effectively in this area. The good thing about Microlina is that it stays greener longer and grows slowly, so it needs less maintenance—and it grows, in the main, in the summertime. It can be a bushfire protection mechanism. I think the lesson that came out of the fires, especially when they hit Duffy, was that the homes that had green grass around them tended to survive better.

If you are growing a native lawn that is active and greener in the summer, you are also putting a fire barrier around your house. In the fire exclusion zone, particularly down the

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