Page 1804 - Week 05 - Thursday, 2 April 2009
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MR BARR: Thank you, Mr Speaker; I will take your advice.
Environment—grasslands
MR CORBELL: In question time today Ms Hunter asked me a question about recommendation 19 of the report of the Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment into endangered native grassland sites. In her question, Ms Hunter indicated that it was her understanding of the commissioner’s recommendation that there was a requirement to undertake ecological burns this autumn on selected grassland sites. That is not correct. The commissioner recommended the undertaking of experimental ecological burns on selected sites to determine the appropriateness of a wider application for managing lowland native grassland sites in the ACT, but this is specifically included outside the commissioner’s urgent recommendations. Therefore, the government will be proceeding with its response to this recommendation in due course, as I indicated during question time. It is not an urgent recommendation of the commissioner; the urgent recommendations relate to the culling of abundant kangaroo populations on native grassland sites.
Ms Hunter: Mr Speaker, may I correct my question, because I think that it has been misinterpreted by Mr Corbell?
MR SPEAKER: Ms Hunter, you will need leave under standing order 46 to make a personal explanation.
Mr Stanhope: Only if she has been misrepresented.
MR SPEAKER: Ms Hunter, do you claim to have been misrepresented or do you simply wish to make a further statement?
Ms Hunter: I wish to clarify the question that I asked.
MR SPEAKER: Is that a misrepresentation or a further statement?
MS HUNTER: I seek leave to make a statement.
Leave granted.
MS HUNTER: The question that I actually asked today was this. There was a report on the ACT lowland native grassland investigation; this was recently completed by the Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment. What I was talking about was that the report itself identified 11 grassland sites that are approaching critical thresholds of native grass and the need for burns in 2009—not that it was part of recommendation 19 that the commissioner had made within the body of the report but that, with 11 grassland sites approaching critical thresholds, in order to maintain those native grasslands, autumn burns were identified as the best management option.
MR SPEAKER: Members, we now move to presentation of papers.
MR CORBELL: Mr Speaker, I seek leave to make a statement in response.
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