Page 648 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 9 March 2011

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(a) setting aside space for community gardens in all new residential developments and identifying appropriate sites to develop community gardens in established suburbs;

(b) improving the existing standard licence arrangement for the Department of Territory and Municipal Services and developing a model agreement for private leaseholders, to enter into with the operators of community gardens;

(d) providing additional resources to:

(i) support person to help co-ordinate the expansion of community gardens in the ACT;

(ii) grants to help meet the costs of new community gardens; and

(iii) gardening/food growing training, open to all members of the community;

(e) improving existing assistance available to public and community housing tenants to be involved in community garden projects; and

(f) developing a policy paper on local food production, including community and household gardens, to be tabled in the Assembly by June 2011; and

(3) calls upon the Government to report back to the Assembly on each of the above issues by the last sitting day in June 2011.”.

MR COE (Ginninderra) (5.03): I shall not talk to the amendment quite yet—I have not actually sighted it, but I can guess what it is about.

MR SPEAKER: You might have some discretion on that, Mr Coe, given its late circulation.

MR COE: The community garden is a concept that has many merits. I believe they had their origins in the UK as far back as 1819, and they were made popular during the Great Depression and as victory gardens during the Second World War. The first community gardens appeared in Australia in the mid-70s, and since that time, according to the Australian City Farms and the Garden Network, they have been community managed.

I acknowledge the advantage that community gardens can provide to their communities and I do not rise today to attack the merits of communal gardens. What I rise today to question is how much involvement the ACT government should have with the concept and whether the ACT government could be overextending into this space. I note that the Canberra Organic Growers Society, referenced by both Ms Le Couteur and Mr Stanhope, is in its 35th year of existence. It has established

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