Page 2918 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 30 June 2010
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
where we expect that between now and 30 years hence there will be major dieback within the urban forest.
This government, over the last three years—Ms Le Couteur has gone to some of the history of that—has sought to deal with that issue. We have sought to deal with it proactively and we have heightened levels of investment in trees. I went to the numbers—indeed, I tabled them, willingly, at the request of the Liberal Party. It is interesting to look at the level of investment pursued by this government over the last three years on trees. We have gone from a position, 10 years ago, where, on average, we were planting around 1,000 trees a year in the urban area. Five years ago, it climbed to 3,000.
So 10 years ago on average we planted 1,000 trees a year. It jumped to 3,000 trees a year by 2005. In 2007, as the government began to engage seriously with the impacts of the drought—and, I have to say with a certain penchant or passion that I have for trees—we went from 1,000 a year 10 years ago to 7,000 urban trees—and I am sure there are many we do not count here actually. But three years ago there were 7,000 urban trees planted; two years ago, 11,000 trees and, last year, 12,000 urban trees were planted. I have been the butt of some humour or jokes around here about the fact that I do like trees. Over the course of my term in government, we have planted somewhere in the order of probably a million trees, not counting radiata or our pine forests.
Just in terms of the equation, street amenity and our commitment to replacing trees, this whole motion and the Leader of the Opposition’s speeches on this issue have been all about street amenity, replacing trees, our barren streetscapes, trees dying in our streets. Last year we planted 12,000 trees. We removed, I believe—and I will probably have to confirm this—1,700 dead, dying and dangerous trees and we planted 12,000 trees. So we planted over 10,000 more trees than we removed last year. This is in the urban area—this is just in the last year—not counting the 270,000 that we planted or arranged to be planted in non-urban areas of the ACT. In the last three years we planted three-quarters of a million or so trees in the non-urban area.
We have a deep and genuine commitment to trees, and that is reflected in the level of our expenditure and in the numbers planted in recent years. We have a number of programs. Ms Le Couteur goes to this point. There is not a single tree program; there are a number of them. There are a number of programs and a number of funding lines in relation to tree maintenance, tree planting and specific and special tree planting regimes. Indeed, in the current budget we provided $150,000 to revegetate Mount Painter; $200,000 for weed removal and tree planting in the Jerrabomberra wetlands; $1 million of urban forest renewal funding has been retained to ensure—
Mr Seselja: It is no longer pressing, though, is it?
MR STANHOPE: It is pressing. It is pressing to the extent—
Mr Seselja: Why are you gutting $11.2 million out of it then?
MR STANHOPE: Because we are developing an evidence-based, community-focused approach or response to the intricacies and the difficulties of the urban forest
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video