Page 2921 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 30 June 2010

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under his documents; he was shuffling them on his desk. He pulled the bits out that suited his purpose. But, just for the record again, what we got was attachment B and attachment D. And I would very surprised if TAMS supplied a document that did not have an attachment A and did not have an attachment C. Normally, that is how the alphabet works: A, B, C, D.

The Chief Minister talks about how he is the only one who has planted trees. I did a few searches. There was our project in Kambah for the urban forest renewal back in 2000. But my favourite was the Boboyan pines project, where we actually ripped out almost 400,000 pines, about 380 hectares of them incorrectly planted in the 60s in Namadgi national park, and replaced them with 500,000 eucalypts. And there was an appropriation, according to this wonderful summary of it by Eleanor Stoddart, which people can find on the web, of $400,000 to cover that.

We can all drag out numbers when it suits us. We can all table half a document when it covers us, when we do not have the courage of our conviction to table the entire document—because it will, of course, present a different picture from what the Chief Minister was trying to do. But we will be remembered. The Chief Minister will be remembered as the great tree killer and the Greens will be known as his accomplices in this crime.

Ms Le Couteur says in her amendment—it is a fantastic amendment; it is just so typically Green:

“(b) that the ACT Budget has deferred funding of the Urban Forest Renewal Program; and

But, actually, the committee did not. They listed it as a key issue in discussion in the estimates. They do not discuss it in the report. Ms Le Couteur needs to go back to page 54 to refresh her memory. It is part of the index and it just says:

Land Management (output 1.4)

5.10 Key issues raised included:

This is the second dot point:

Urban forest renewal program, including partial funding deferral and referral to the Commissioner for the Environment and Sustainability (664-671)

How is that raising it as a key issue? Where is the discussion? Where is the conclusion? Where is the scholarly work? Where is the effort? More importantly, where is the recommendation? It does not exist, because it was not raised in the report. It was certainly raised in the hearings. It is a notation in the index in the report. And that is what is wrong with Ms Le Couteur’s approach here today. I am appalled, because you are normally much better than that. You actually do care and you actually do get it. You are normally much, much better than that.

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