Page 4083 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 20 September 2011
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done in that area? The two nature reserves in the immediate vicinity give evidence of the fact that these things are always considered, have always been considered and will be considered. But there is a big difference between saying “let’s do sustainable development” and the Greens’ position, which is “let’s not do any development at all”. That is the dilemma being faced now as the Greens get more influence in our federal parliament and, at the moment, the ACT parliament.
I go and hear from parents in Throsby and talk to them about their desire to see a Catholic school built there, which has now been delayed—potentially for at least a year. The school community is now having to make alternative arrangements, extending other temporary accommodation, because there is a delay in getting access to the site that they believed they would have access to. For the parents who are in that area of Throsby and in the surrounds of Gungahlin, right across Gungahlin, who are waiting on that Catholic high school, there is a legitimate concern about the position.
When we talk about ecology and when we talk about the ecological footprint, we can all agree that developments should be sustainable, but it is a big leap from there to say that Throsby should be a development no-go zone.
That is the problem. When these things are pointed out to the Greens, they claim that they never said them. When it was put by me on radio, Ms Hunter claimed that these words had never been said. She claimed that it was not their position. Mr Rattenbury set out crystal clear that it should be a complete development no-go zone.
Next time when we hear the Greens when they are saying that they support affordable housing, we should note that they should also be honest enough to say that they are not prepared to allow the development to take place that would assist there to be more affordable housing. When young families come to them and say, “We can’t afford to buy because the Labor Government has done such a terrible job with housing affordability,” the Greens should be honest enough to say, “We made that situation worse, and we want to make it even worse by wiping out a whole development front in Throsby”—a large projected suburb, a suburb that has been long planned for.
As I have pointed out in this place before, one of the reasons that the Greens have identified Throsby and said that it should be a development no-go zone is that it was planned long ago. Long ago it was seen as a development front. That land was reserved for that purpose. As a result, we did not see the kind of intensive farming that we would otherwise have seen, because of the short-term leases that were granted.
We now have this circular logic where, if you do the planning work—if you identify the areas that you are going to preserve—they are likely to have a little more value, a little more ecological value. Therefore, you turn around and say, “We can’t develop them.” That throws our whole planning system into disarray. It throws the future planning of Canberra into disarray.
I am sure that in every suburb, every greenfield site and every greenfield development that we look to, there will be someone saying, “There is a golden sun moth here, there is this species here and this has wonderful values.” We heard that when the Gungahlin
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