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MR SPEAKER: Order! You are all beginning, by your interjections, to frighten the horses. Go on, Mr Connolly.

MR CONNOLLY: As long as we are not frightening the birds, Mr Speaker. If we were frightening the birds, they would be flying around looking for gum trees to land on, and when the Axeman is finished with the town there might not be too many trees left.

Mr Moore's objections in principle are clearly wrong because his objections in principle are inconsistent with his stance on both leasehold and heritage. This law may not be perfect, but it is an existing protection. If Mr Humphries is serious about concerns and faults in this regime, by all means let him bring before this Assembly legislation that provides different regimes for protection of trees; but do not just abolish it. If this law is passed, and perhaps it will be, with Mr Moore's enthusiastic axe sharpening, we will have an absurd situation in an area of new development. During the period of the development the trees will be protected, because it is a proud factor in the ACT that, when land is released for greenfields development, if, fortunately, there are old-growth gums in that area, the planning authorities and, generally, the building community will go to great lengths to protect those trees. There have been notorious failures where trees have been chopped down; but, by and large, the intention is to preserve those trees for the suburban development. But, once the development stage is finished and the land is sold, it is now, under Mr Moore's enthusiastic axe sharpening, perfectly appropriate for the private resident to go out and lay into those gum trees.

We would say that that is quite absurd. Why go to all the bother of protecting, as we all agree we should, those old-stand trees as new greenfields developments are released, only to get to that point as soon as the development is finished? It is obviously more expensive to develop around the trees. It would be far cheaper for the developers in greenfields developments in, say, Gungahlin if the first thing they did was put the bulldozer down, smash everything, and build.

Mr Moore: This still prevents it. Come on, Terry; stop misrepresenting the whole thing. We are talking about built-up areas.

MR CONNOLLY: Yes, absolutely, it prevents them from bulldozing them at the outset; but, as soon as the land is released and becomes private residential leases, under your enthusiastic support the individual lessee can go out and chop those trees down.

Mr Moore: After it is built.

MR CONNOLLY: Once the house is built. We go to enormous lengths and efforts to protect the gum tree during the development phase, only to have it totally vulnerable at the end of the phase. We are quite dismayed that someone who has had a reputation for sound environmental strategies and has taken a real interest in that is now the enthusiastic proponent of axing the existing protection for gum trees.

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