Page 2842 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 19 September 2006
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I wish to make a couple of comments in relation to that. Firstly, we need to acknowledge that whenever we develop a new greenfields site there is going to be some environmental effect. Of course, all governments take account of that through various studies. I would encourage the government to continue to try to ensure that the environmental impact is the minimum possible.
Of course some trees are going to go and some of those trees are going to be significant. I think it is unrealistic and overly prescriptive to suggest that we should say to developers that they have to put in place restoration initiatives that will deliver equivalent biodiversity value. Firstly, it is a bit vague how you would judge whether the restoration initiative has delivered equivalent biodiversity value, but I think we do need to recognise that development does come with some environmental costs. If there were no growth in Canberra, if there were fewer and fewer people here, the impact on the environment certainly would be less, but the reality is that as the city grows there will be some environmental impact. We need to make sure that that is not too significant. I do not think many in the community would suggest, where a few significant trees would have to go in order to make way for new homes, that that would be an unreasonable impact on the environment.
I think that those kinds of things, going back once again to my earlier point, just tend to add to costs and are overly prescriptive. I think it is a vague concept anyway, but it does tend to add to costs, and the costs of building in the ACT are amongst the highest in the country as well. So we do need to be careful not to put more and more burdens on builders and developers as the costs of those burdens are inevitably passed on to first home buyers. I have real concern about the difficulty for young people in particular of getting into the housing market in the ACT. The more we place these burdens, and I think in this case unreasonable burdens, on builders and developers, the more upward pressure there will be on building costs and on the cost of the land.
Mr Speaker, we have made our position clear on cat containment zones before, so I will not go into that. Recommendation 15 states:
The Committee recommends “where possible” be replaced with “as a priority and under the Tree Protection Act 2005” …
I would make the same sort of point as I was making in relation to recommendation 12. We do not want to put in place undue burdens. I think we already have a fairly stringent system in the ACT in terms of tree protection. I would argue that perhaps it has gone too far, but certainly we have more than enough protection for significant trees. There would not be a developer in town anymore who could get away with just knocking down trees where they liked. In fact, it is not in the interests of anyone for developers to be knocking down trees if they do not need to, because most people enjoy the amenity that trees bring to their blocks and they actually add value. So there is not a real commercial imperative in most cases for removing trees, except where it is necessary for the actual house to be constructed or for the various site works to be conducted.
In general, I think Crace will be a fantastic new suburb. The ever growing Gungahlin market is becoming a better and better place to live. I hope that Crace will add to that in a really positive and significant way, but I do think that we need to be careful generally
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