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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 6 Hansard (18 June) . . Page.. 1760 ..

MR SPEAKER: Ms McRae, I warn you.

MR HUMPHRIES: I suspect it is very hard to satisfy Ms McRae, and I will not even attempt to do so.

Mr Corbell: Mr Speaker, I rise under standing order 213. I ask whether Mr Humphries would care to table the document he was reading from in relation to visitor numbers at Tidbinbilla?

MR HUMPHRIES: I indicated that I was tabling it.

MR HUMPHRIES: Yesterday Ms Horodny asked me about Landcare work at Grevillea Park and whether the $30,000 for Grevillea Park restoration has been used to clean up the mess created by the FAI car rally, how the car rally rehabilitation entered into the objectives of the Decade of Landcare program and why the rally organisers were not paying for this work. I have to say, with great respect, that it is astonishing how often Ms Horodny gets the wrong end of the stick, or at least trots out in this place as gospel matters based on very poor advice or a very poor understanding of the processes or the objectives.

The reality is that the $30,000 allocated to this project was not for restoration of damage resulting from the FAI car rally. The combined effects of prolonged dry conditions and grazing by rabbits have damaged and denuded large areas of grass cover at Grevillea Park. The park was in need of restoration prior to the FAI car rally. Erosion has been an ongoing problem for many years. The erosion problems have been caused by a lack of ground cover and the inappropriate and illegal use of vehicles, generally during night hours. This has led to the creation of unwanted vehicle tracks and soil erosion channels. Given the close proximity of Lake Burley Griffin, it is important to halt soil erosion before damage occurs to water quality in the lake and downstream waters. The project will provide permanent barriers - approximately 600 metres of them - to prevent vehicle access to grassed areas. The project will also restore grass on all degraded areas, rehabilitate erosion channels and provide cut-off drains to prevent soil from entering the lake.

Yesterday Ms Horodny also asked how I determine the priorities for spending on the Decade of Landcare projects and whether I could table any policies or guidelines used within the Department of Urban Services for determining the priorities. This was a particularly curious question. The Decade of Landcare grants to which Ms Horodny referred were, of course, Decade of Landcare capital works grants. That capital works program is developed within the policy and contextual framework of the document which I now table - the ACT Decade of Landcare Plan, published in 1991 and produced by the former Government. I am very surprised Ms Horodny was not aware of that document, because it is the very document to which she referred in her question. It is the document that governs the policies under which Decade of Landcare grants are being made.

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