Page 643 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 9 March 2011
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Paragraph 2(e) asks the government for help by assisting public and community housing tenants to be involved in community garden projects. I think that is particularly important so that the public and community housing tenants are integrated into their local community, doing something which most of us enjoy and which will also reduce their cost of living by producing fresh, high quality fruit and vegies some of the year.
Paragraph 2(f) calls on the government to develop a policy paper on local food production, including community and household gardens, to be tabled in the Assembly by June 2011. As I have tried to demonstrate in the limited amount of time I have available to me, community and household gardens can be an important part of food production for the ACT. As I said, 40 square metres is possibly enough for most of your household’s fruit and vegie production. It is not enough by itself; other food is needed. Food is vital for life. None of us can live without it. It is an important issue and I think it is something that the ACT government really needs to look into and have some policy on to ensure that the people of the ACT have access to high quality, nutritious, sustainable, affordable food. I commend this motion to the Assembly.
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Minister for Transport, Minister for Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Business and Economic Development, Minister for Land and Property Services, Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs and Minister for the Arts and Heritage) (4.50): I thank Ms Le Couteur for the motion. I have to say at the outset that, while the government did have some issues with some aspects of the motion, I welcome the opportunity to respond and, indeed, I am fully in agreement with the spirit of the motion. But, as I say, the government did have some little issue with some aspects of it. I propose an amendment which I have been negotiating with Ms Le Couteur, or at least my office has been negotiating. I want to note that the government is, by and large, in full agreement.
I think we all acknowledge the benefits of gardening and the enormous joy that comes from gardening. I am a keen gardener. Gardening is possibly my main recreation and my major escape. I garden most days to some degree. In the context of a discussion around gardening—and Ms Le Couteur goes to this and seeks in her motion to combine a conversation on community gardens and household gardens—household gardens have certainly been very much an icon of our city. I do not gainsay the benefits of household gardening at all. I embrace them deeply myself.
But I do think that the issue around household gardening is distinct from the major issue or the purport of the motion today, which is about community gardening and Ms Le Couteur’s desire to see the government be more explicit in its support of community gardens and the arrangements that apply to community gardening. I will perhaps concentrate on that a little more.
I think it is fair to say that within the ACT—and I do not know the actual number—there would be many hundreds of community gardeners, individuals that have successfully established new community gardens and work in a whole range of environments, whether it be on unleased territory land, within schools, within community housing developments or within public housing.
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