Page 605 - Week 02 - Thursday, 20 February 2020
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Monash Drive is no longer required. We continue to advocate that it should be removed from the National Capital Plan and we support the intention of Minister Rattenbury’s motion to investigate the rezoning and status of the yellow box woodland. Minister Gentleman, who is not here today but on whose behalf I speak, will be very happy to report back to the Assembly by August in relation to this matter.
MS LEE (Kurrajong) (11.57): I thank Mr Rattenbury for bringing on this motion for debate today under crossbench executive members’ business. However, I struggle at times to understand the role that Mr Rattenbury has, or thinks he has, in this place. I struggle to understand whether it is simply bald-faced gall or a genuine belief that he is merely a member of the crossbench in this chamber and that his role as minister in in a multitude of portfolios in successive governments for almost a decade—and before that as speaker—is meaningless and without influence. I contest that, as he has never genuinely been just a crossbench member.
Let me give an example. Last week at the Inner South Canberra Community Council meeting, Mr Rattenbury, as Minister for Climate Change and Sustainability, was invited to speak about tree cover in the ACT and the government’s proposed changes to planning rules to accommodate these changes. But clearly it was not Minister Rattenbury who spoke; it was Shane Rattenbury, ACT Greens member for Kurrajong. And on more than one occasion he spoke on behalf of his colleague, fellow Greens member Caroline Le Couteur.
He spoke of how the government had let down the people of Canberra by not delivering the promised tree cover in new suburbs like Wright. He spoke of areas in places like Ngunnawal that were effectively treeless deserts, how the tree canopy had declined and that this decline must be addressed. He urged those at the meeting to make sure they submitted their ideas and responses to the government’s consultation process before the closing date of 25 February because, he warned, there were others in the community who would oppose these new tree cover quotas.
The slides he used for his presentations were prominently badged with the ACT Greens logo, and the title slide specifically stated that it was a presentation by Shane Rattenbury, ACT Greens member for Kurrajong. Even more brazen was a slide which encouraged people at that public meeting to make submissions to the government’s consultation process, advertising an ACT Greens website. At worst it is misleading to encourage people to make submissions to a government consultation through an ACT Greens website; at the very least it is confusing. Was it an oversight that the website he put up was in fact not the one intended for government purposes but one directly linked to the ACT Greens? Was it an innocent error? Was it bald-faced gall? Perhaps it was simply blatant dirty politicking. As Mr Rattenbury said yesterday in this place, I will let others decide.
Mr Rattenbury’s motion today outlines in great detail the importance of yellow box Blakeley’s red gum grassy woodlands and the need to preserve areas in the ACT that have such vegetation. Yellow box Blakeley’s red gum grassy woodland was declared an endangered ecological community in May 1997 under the Nature Conservation Act. It was subsequently recognised nationally under the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, and in 2016 in New South Wales under its
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