Page 3339 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 17 August 2011
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along a sort of peninsula or neck between the two nature reserves—Mulligans Flat and Goorooyarroo, which host the key yellow box red gum grassy woodland. It is a vital link between the Brindabellas to the west and the area around to Majura and Ainslie to the east.
I would point out that it is also, from a sheer planning point of view, an urban planning point of view—because all of it is planning—inappropriate for fire management purposes. We are going to end up with a long skinny narrow bit which is going to be a potential fire trap because it will be surrounded on three sides by dry grassy woodland. As Mr Rattenbury has noted, we are in disagreement with the government about fire management issues here. We believe it is totally inappropriate for fire management zones to go into the nature reserves. Asset protection zones should be within the urban footprint.
This area of nature reserve has also been part of Australia’s first nationally funded large-scale ecological management study, jointly funded by the Australian Research Council and the ACT government over many years. This research is progressing well and scientists are now starting to introduce species back into the area which have been locally extinct for many decades. Why, I ask you, would we want to jeopardise this area, this research and this progress by increasing urban pressures on the nature reserves, rather than supporting the research work of these ecologists by protecting a buffer zone around it? We have put a lot of work into these nature reserves. Why do we not finish the job properly and make the asset protection zone outside rather than inside?
The government commented in its response to the planning committee’s report on Throsby that research on Goorooyarroo would enable revision of the land use policy for adjacent areas. You could say that that is really what Mr Rattenbury is asking for today in his motion. The 2005 planning committee report also recommended that Throsby, and the limited amount of Throsby that would exist, be made a cat containment suburb. Unfortunately, has not been carried through to subsequent Gungahlin suburbs, apart from Forde and Bonner, and appears to be failure of government policy. I look forward to further announcements from the government on cat containment policy in the next few months.
When I hear that planning processes for areas such as Throsby are run concurrently rather than sequentially, I know it is because of the pressure to release land. We are letting down biodiversity or letting down other species. We are letting down future generations of Canberrans and future generations, if they exist, of all the endangered species there. Good planning process and due planning process should not be rushed, even for land release processes. Once we have built things on these areas we cannot go backwards. It is a one-way trip. We have got to make sure that we do the studies up-front. That is what Mr Rattenbury’s motion is all about—doing the studies, doing the work up-front. The precautionary principle dictates that we have to make these studies before we make unfixable mistakes.
Again getting back to 2005, one of the recommendations was that all future draft variations should include ecological connectivity and species protection targets. The government has agreed to this, but we have yet to see this carried through into other
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