Page 2311 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 23 June 2010
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As I have said, Mr Stanhope knows the ropes, because he has endured the wrath of activists. I have often been quite sympathetic to the position he has found himself in. One of the most memorable pieces of media I have ever seen the Chief Minister do was when he gave a heartfelt plea which was essentially a plea for people to understand that conservation was more than the protection of the cutest, more than the notion that if you have large eyes and fur you are worth protecting. On one occasion, he made a heartfelt plea that somebody needed to stand up for the perunga grasshopper, and I agree with him. Conservation is not about looking after cute furry animals. Conservation is a difficult thing to do. It is a balancing act. And it is even more a balancing act when essentially we live in an urban environment.
What we have seen as a result of this is the development of the kangaroo management plan, which has given particular authority to the decision making because it is a well-researched and well-referenced plan. The plan, recently finalised, carries the support of some of the most respected in our community, including the RSPCA and the Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment. The Canberra Liberals support the kangaroo management plan, and I wonder whether Mr Barr would call this support opposition for opposition’s sake. We support it because, unlike the work that Mr Barr often does in this place, Mr Stanhope has developed a document that provides the basis for balance for the sustainable coexistence of our native fauna and flora in and of themselves as well as in the context of an urban settlement. The kangaroo management plan sums this up nicely when it says:
The goals of kangaroo management in the ACT are to:
• maintain populations of kangaroos as a significant part of the fauna of the ‘bush capital’ and a component of the grassy ecosystems of the Territory; and
• manage and minimise the environmental, economic and social impacts of those kangaroo populations on other biota, grassy ecosystems, ACT residents and visitors.
One of the reasons the plan and the code are so authoritative and so well researched is that, somewhat unusually for the ACT Labor government, there has been a good process of public consultation that has informed the development of the kangaroo management plan in particular. For these reasons, the people of Canberra have largely come to accept the objectives of the plan and the code, to maintain the sustainability of the delicate balance and coexistence I mentioned earlier.
Nonetheless, there are a few in our community who believe that human existence should be subservient to the existence of animals. There is a certain head-in-the-sand approach by some people whose utterly unrealistic ideology is that humans, if they must exist at all, should live somewhere else, wherever that somewhere might be. They do not see that humans and plants and animals have ever been able to coexist in a sustainable manner. They do not see that sustainable coexistence and the maintenance of that delicate balance mean that controls and management strategies are necessary. That is all I intend to say about that small part of our community. Simply, their credibility does not match the excellent program that is in place to manage the sustainable coexistence, that delicate balance.
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