Page 3461 - Week 09 - Thursday, 20 August 2009
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Indeed I will be tabling the report in a few minutes, Mr Coe, as you very well know. There is this notion of the sort of dancing in the limelight that Mr Barr has just gone to. Here is Mr Coe, “I’ll drag him out. I’ll demand at 5 to 3 that he table the report and then I’ll put out a press release saying, ‘He’s tabled the report after I demanded it.’” I can see the press release now from Mr Coe. Brilliant strategy, Mr Coe!
Opposition members interjecting—
MR SPEAKER: He has finished.
Department of Territory and Municipal Services—services
MS BURCH: My question is to the Chief Minister, the Minister for Territory and Municipal Services. Would the minister please advise members about the extent and growth in services that TAMS provides to the territory?
MR STANHOPE: Thank you, Ms Burch. I appreciate the question. I was attempting to provide this information to Mr Coe, but the Liberal Party were not interested. I applaud and acknowledge the interest of Ms Burch in the delivery of municipal services in the ACT—unlike the shadow spokesperson.
It is important that we do reflect on the extent of the services that are provided by Territory and Municipal Services. There is a significant misunderstanding of the enormity of the task that we face here in the ACT in managing municipal services, and members of this place do need to understand it so they can make a better informed contribution to debate, rather than the nonsense we have heard just now from Mr Coe in relation to what really is a significant issue facing the government and the community.
Opposition members interjecting—
MR STANHOPE: In that context these numbers are relevant and it is relevant that I go to them. I know that your attention span is not too great and you will struggle to maintain attention for five minutes, but this information is significant. Parks, Conservation and Lands within TAMS manages 235,824 hectares of land. That is the size of the land managed within Territory and Municipal Services. That is 235,824 hectares of land across a whole range of descriptors. They include national parks, water catchment areas, our commercial pine forests, rural leases, grazing agistment leases, horse paddocks, lakes and ponds, urban open space, and town and district parks. It also, of course, has a role in maintaining conservation values of all rural land within the ACT. That is what Parks, Conservation and Lands does. That is its task—to manage those areas; in other words, the whole of the ACT.
Look at some of the implications of managing that, some of the management responsibilities. For instance, Parks, Conservation and Lands manages 3,000 kilometres of unsealed rural roads. Parks, Conservation and Lands mows almost 5,000 hectares of land multiple times. Parks, Conservation and Lands manages 630,000 trees in the urban area. In the last six years Parks, Conservation and Lands has removed 18,000 mature dead or drought-affected trees. It deals even now with somewhere in the order of 2,000 tree inquiries a year.
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