Page 2607 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 28 June 2011
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the ACT government but employed by COGS or some other group, could be employed. Their problem would be how to keep them down to a part-time coordinator. They could definitely do a full-time job. The demand is there. It possibly is not all coming to the government’s attention, because people do not even realise where in the government they would go to. But I am confident the demand for more is there.
Obviously I think it is great that the government is going to undertake a scoping study of local food production. Food is important. Air, water and then food are the essentials of life. I have been banging on about peak oil for a while, but peak oil is one of the things which will really impact on food production. We use oil for fertilisers, we use oil for farm machinery, we use oil for getting food to market and then to our plates. Local food production is one of the ways which will make Canberra a resilient city so that we cope with the impacts of peak oil and climate change. This is why I would like to see the government being a bit more positive about community gardens and recognising that yes, the demand is there. There really is work that a part-time or even a full-time coordinator could do on this.
The other thing which could be explored more in this paper is encouraging community gardens on land other than territory-owned land. I am in the unfortunate position of spending a lot of time at an aged care institution at present and I observe that in many other aged care institutions there is a lot of unused land where I am confident that, with a bit of support, it could be a win-win for the community and the residents by developing better use of the land. A community garden could be part of that.
But in summary I thank the minister for this and I look forward to further developments with community gardens in Canberra. It is a movement which is only starting and it is going to get a lot bigger.
Planning—Kambah Village, Tuggeranong and Erindale
Statement by minister
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development, Minister for Territory and Municipal Services and Minister for Police and Emergency Services), by leave: On 25 August last year the Assembly resolved that the government should undertake a master plan for the Kambah group centre, noting the run-down state of the centre. In this resolution the Assembly noted the importance of developing “a process for meaningful consultation with the community on planning” for land use policy changes, identifying a list of priority areas for master planning and preparing the master plans for our town, group and local centres. The resolution did identify that the government should report back to the Assembly by the end of June this year with the results of a priority list for master plans and in September 2011 with a finalised Kambah master plan.
I would like to take this opportunity to advise the Assembly of the substantial progress that has been made to fulfil these commitments and to note, however, that to finalise the work to meet these time frames would seriously compromise “meaningful consultation” with the community.
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