Page 2676 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 10 August 2016
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invasion of African lovegrass out in the Tidbinbilla area especially, but it is also very much in our suburban areas. I am not sure that the $500,000 in one-off initiative funding this year will be sufficient to address the invasive weeds.
I would like to make a few brief comments about the proposed new suburb in Tuggeranong. In early March 2016, a Canberra Times article quoted Minister Gentleman as raising the prospect of a new suburb in Tuggeranong with the proposed name, at that time, of Thompson. There was quite a bit of outcry from the community, including local sporting clubs in the area. In its briefing paper released in March this year, the Conservation Council outlined its concerns about this proposed development, in particular its concerns about potential impacts on the Murrumbidgee River corridor. Due to public sentiment, which was largely against the proposed development of the new suburb, the government no longer refers to it as Thompson and is now referring to this as western Greenway.
I understand the government is undertaking public consultation on this development, and it was listed recently as the western Greenway neighbourhood proposal on time to talk. What constituents are asking me is whether the government will actually listen and incorporate any community feedback received during the consultation. Constituents are very concerned about the impact on the Murrumbidgee River corridor. They wonder if it is going to go ahead whether the community consultation indicates that or not.
Last night, Minister Gentleman spoke about the importance of town and centre plans in order to maximise the use of areas, but the proposed new suburb of Thompson did not take the Tuggeranong town centre master plan into consideration.
Also last night, Minister Gentleman spoke about a single conservation agency. I am not quite sure how many times we have spoken about that in this place, both in this current Assembly and before then. Is it two, four, six, eight, 10 times? I do not know how many times it is, but it is a considerable number of times. It is good to see that from 1 July of this year that has actually taken place. As long ago as March 2013 the Liberals moved a motion asking the government to establish a single nature conservation agency, and that work has been ongoing in this place since 2013. It is good to see that it now is in place, although it did take quite some time.
Another item that we talked about during estimates committee hearings was the kangaroo fertility trial and the kangaroo cull. The caring for our environment kangaroo population research and control initiative in this year’s budget says that it aims to “manage native wildlife which has the potential to become overabundant and cause environmental impacts to the Territory’s nature reserves”. So the current focus is on kangaroo population management activities, including research and monitoring of non-lethal population control methods.
In the estimates hearings, I asked about the costs of the fertility control trials for the kangaroos. In answer to a question on notice, Minister Corbell said that the kangaroo population research and control initiative “includes the 2016-17 delivery of both the operational implementation of kangaroo management ($538,000) and the research and monitoring component ($164,000)”. There was, I think, additional funding in the
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