Page 218 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 11 February 2015
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that a Green anywhere else in the country would support? I doubt it. The government are so determined to go ahead with their ideological light rail project that every other principle that they had gets pushed aside—arrogantly and blindly pushed aside.
The motion that I move today discusses the last tree inventory report and the last tree study which the government has done. It was in 2010. Since then the government has commissioned some landscape architects to do some work, but there is a clear distinction between the work done by the landscape architects and the tree inventory report. In actual fact, it was the tree inventory report that suggested going to a landscape architect because they were different types of work.
In that 2010 report, the last time the trees were properly studied, there were 531 Eucalyptus elata trees located within the median strip between Alinga and Mouat streets on Northbourne Avenue. The report by the experts said that 75 per cent of these trees exhibited good or fair health and that 65 per cent of these trees had a useful life expectancy of 20 years or greater. That was in 2010.
Actually, that same report of 2010 suggests that doing a staged approach or a sporadic approach to replanting would be best so as never to have an impact whereby a whole block had trees removed at once. They did not want a whole block removed, let alone a whole street removed, Madam Speaker.
If a tree report like this was handed down for any other project in Canberra, any other private development in Canberra, any building proposal, any construction proposal whatsoever, there would be no way whatsoever that the government, including Mr Rattenbury, would disregard that report.
Yet that is exactly what is happening here. We have two standards. We have one standard when it suits them and another standard when it does not. We are seeing that with the planning bill which is being brought on tomorrow. There are two standards. We are seeing that with the trees. There are two standards. It goes on and on and on.
When you have two standards, that is what hypocrisy is; two standards, no consistency. The business case goes on to say that during the project it is conceivable that all existing median trees will require removal—that is, every tree on Northbourne Avenue will be chopped down to make way for light rail.
Of course, light rail is a project that will cost $800 million but only carry one per cent of Canberrans. The government claims that the trees on Northbourne Avenue have to be replaced anyway, so why do we not we chop them down now. I should remind the government that trees are, of course, organic and will die. But they will die at different times. As the facts indicate, the trees on Northbourne Avenue are not dying and do not need to be replaced at this time. As of 2010 they had a 20-year life expectancy according to the expert, the last person to assess the health of the trees.
Madam Speaker, it is important that we have a look at what the 2010 report said. It was done by Homewood Consulting Pty Ltd and was prepared for the Department of Territory and Municipal Services. As noted in the motion, there are 531 Eucalyptus elata trees in the median strip between Alinga Street in the city and Mouat Street in
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