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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (25 June) . . Page.. 2114 ..

MS HORODNY (continuing):

This reduction is made even worse by the increase in costs from inflation over the last few years. Staff in the environment part of the department are under increased pressure but have fewer resources. The Government's recent announcement that it has created a new agency, Environment ACT, will do nothing to alleviate this. It is just a rearrangement of sections within the department, with little change to reporting arrangements or responsibilities.

The Government's attempts to gloss over the continuing decline in environment spending are easy to see through. The Minister made a grand claim when the budget was announced that $1m was going to be spent on six major conservation and Landcare projects. Let us have a look at where the $1m is actually going. Of that $1m, $185,000 is going into refurbishing the roads in the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve. You can hardly call that a conservation project, Mr Humphries. Although $215,000 is going into weed control programs, in last year's budget the Minister said that $728,000 was being spent on weed control. Either there is a huge reduction in weed control work in this budget or the Minister last year was hugely exaggerating what was really being spent on weed control. There might be some very creative accounting going on in this area. I believe that our Minister for the Environment does not have very much idea about weeds. I believe that, when he talks about weeds officers, he is talking about the people who are spraying the pink stuff in the crevices in our pavements around the city. I do not think he is talking about people who are working on environmental weeds, which are a great threat to our nature conservation areas. They are also a threat to agricultural areas around the ACT.

In this budget $134,000 is being spent on the Decade of Landcare program, yet in the fine print we read that only $30,000 of this will be spent in this financial year. I know there is often some slippage in capital works spending, but why can the Government not spend more than a quarter of this allocation in this financial year? In fact, we found out from answers to questions in the Estimates Committee hearings that spending of the yearly allocation of Decade of Landcare money is running about a year behind. A whole year's allocation for 1995-96 of $125,000 has not been spent to date - not a cent of it. You are running a full year behind on that line. We also found out that $30,000, or in fact a quarter of this year's allocation, was being spent on erosion control at Grevillea Park, which happens to be the site of one of the stages of the FAI car rally. I know that Mr Humphries has denied that that car rally has anything to do - - -

Debate interrupted.

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Hird): Order! It being 5.00 pm, I propose the question:

That the Assembly do now adjourn.

Mr Humphries: I require the question to be put forthwith without debate.

Question resolved in the negative.

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