Page 746 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 9 March 2005
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a public way is to have all the papers that are available, all of what everyone said on the subject, laid open for the people of the ACT to inform themselves—not to have it delivered via the cipher of Shaping our territory or Jon Stanhope, the Minister for the Environment, but to actually see what a whole lot of people said.
This is necessary because yesterday Mr Stanhope stood in this place and said that Shaping our territory was signed off by a squillion people, and he read out a list. I will read out this list again. The first is Sandy Hollway. I have a high regard for Mr Hollway, but I do not know that he is an expert in forestry, water conservation, run-off or chemicals; I do not think he is a scientist. Next is Maureen Cane, a social worker and member of the community held in the highest regard but who does not have those scientific qualifications. Peter Cullen, without a doubt, is the foremost freshwater ecologist in the country. Robert de Castella is a fine runner, a fine advocate for health and fitness, but his scientific knowledge, I think, is a little on the light side. Ms Dorte Eklund and Ms Catherine Keirnan have particular expertise in planning and landscape architecture, but none in those fields. Kevin Jeffery, a rural lessee, would have a passing knowledge of most of these things. Mr Peter Kanowski is a forester whose views we should take into account. Ms Pegrum and Mr Scott-Bohanna from the National Capital Authority have no particular expertise in this area. Mr Terry Snow is a foremost Canberra, a businessman, a philanthropist and a man of considerable note but, again, someone who has limited but probably a passing enthusiasm for these issues. Mr Thompson and Mr Tonkin are representatives of the government, and Professor Robert Wasson is a foremost ecologist.
It is a very long list there, but there are actually three people with expertise in the areas that we are concerned about who supposedly signed off on this document and thereby committed the ACT government to reforesting the lower Cotter catchment. There are three people on that long list who have particular expertise, and at least two of those people have come out publicly in the last little while and raised considerable concerns about the department’s and the government’s actions in the lower Cotter catchment.
So what this motion is about is laying bare the record so that the people of Canberra can see what is happening and can make decisions. It is very important to make decisions about the future. As I said, what happens in the Cotter catchment as a result of our failings on 8 January 2003 will impact on the lives of the people of Canberra for the next 100 years at least.
What happened as a result of the ferocity of those fires is that we lost probably 1,000 years worth of build-up of organic material in the soil; there is no organic material in the soil. As a result of that, the soil, in some cases, can lodge rock hard, like concrete, but in other places is quite mobile. You can see the results of that if you visit the Cotter River. At the Cotter Reserve, as I said to the Canberra Times the other day, it is like flowing milk chocolate. The water is brown and that brown is the run-off from completely denuded slopes all around the Cotter catchment.
The Cotter catchment is very important as a recreational area. It is very important—or was before the fires—ecologically; it was one of the few breeding grounds in the ACT of the two-spined blackfish, one of the endangered species. One of the reasons why the two-spined blackfish is endangered is the impact of European carp, which create turbidity and make it difficult for these native species to breed. But we have created
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