Page 3601 - Week 11 - Thursday, 22 September 2005
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Motion (by Mrs Dunne) agreed to:
That clause 10 be reconsidered.
Clause 10—reconsideration.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (5.24): I move amendment No 1 circulated in my name [see schedule 4 at page 3624].
This amendment goes to the heart of the Liberal Party’s concerns about regulated trees in this legislation. The real problem with this legislation is that not all people are equal; not all trees are equal. Trees on leased land, that is, on privately occupied land, are covered by this legislation. But trees on the verge, a median strip or any other unleased land inside the urban area, do not come under the legislation. So you could actually have a twin planting, one on a verge and one on a private block, but only one of those regulated trees would be protected. The one on the verge would not be a regulated tree. The government could come along and do to it what it liked or any other person could come along and do to it what they liked and there would be no sanction against vandalism or destroying that tree.
This is about having a level playing field. If it is good enough for private landholders to bear the burden of this legislation, it should be equally the case that the government should bear the burden of this legislation. This is going to be a test of the government to see whether they are open to treating themselves the way they want to treat their electors, the people of the ACT. If they do not, they will show themselves to be hypocrites. This is about creating a level playing field. This is about treating all trees the same.
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment and Minister for Arts, Heritage and Indigenous Affairs, and Acting Minister for Education and Training) (5.26): Mr Speaker, the government does not support this amendment. Registered trees are protected by this legislation, regardless of the tenure of the land upon which they grow.
Under the bill, the Department of Urban Services would be required to seek the approval of the conservator if it needed to remove a registered tree growing on land it managed. To go behind this approach would be to create an unnecessary burden upon the management of our street and park trees by requiring urban services to seek approval from the conservator prior to removing any tree above 12 metres, et cetera, including street and park trees that are within an area declared as a tree management precinct. Considerable time and resources would be consumed that would be better used to continue managing and enhancing our urban environment.
It appears that the point of the declaration of tree management precincts has been completely missed. The predominant aim of a tree management precinct is to prevent the erosion of the urban forest due to an unnecessary loss of trees relating to development activity. Urban services is not in the habit of removing street or park trees to facilitate development. Our public tree assets are well managed by urban services, which takes a conservative approach to tree removal, removing a tree only if it presents a risk to public safety or if it is dead or dying or conflicting with essential services. In addition,
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