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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 3 Hansard (12 March) . . Page.. 911 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

community. Yet Forde/Bonner is potentially one of the suburbs for release in the near future.

The Conservation Council has made a submission that would have all areas of yellow box/red gum grassy woodland, including fragmented areas, protected. The government has not made a decision on this yet but, if the government were to accept that, it would be very difficult to release any land in Forde or Bonner, which would mean two suburbs of Gungahlin not being built.

These are the very difficult and real issues that we face as a community, and the question this Assembly must debate is the question of sustainability-economic, social and environmental. There are economic and social costs that come with decisions to not release land for development. At the end of the day, it might be entirely legitimate that we accept those costs because we believe the environmental imperative is the overriding one in that circumstance.

But when we have these debates, I do not want the Assembly to just debate the environmental aspect. Members also need to have in their minds the economic and social impacts of any decisions we take. The conclusion I am coming to is that we have to make clear decisions about whether the protection of every fragmented piece of this ecological community will address the sustainability objective we have for our community overall and whether it will prejudice the outcomes for our community in a social or economic sense. Those are the decisions we must make.

The government has already undertaken an extensive range of programs to address nature conservation activity, particularly for these communities. Ms Tucker has referred to the east O'Malley land release. The government has not taken a decision to release or not release east O'Malley. We are waiting for the results of the review and for the draft woodland strategy, which is the review of the existing action plans for yellow box/red gum grassy woodland, six threatened birds and two threatened plants. That draft plan is expected to be prepared by the end of April.

As I foreshadowed at the time the government announced its decision to delay the release of east O'Malley, we will await the release of that draft plan before taking any further decision. That is still the timetable the government is operating to. The priority, as always, is that we establish priority species and communities to ensure that resources are directed to achieve maximum effect in any conservation activity. That was a commitment of the government before the election, and it remains our commitment.

The woodland strategy will be an input into the Canberra spatial planning process, and the government will review land releases in the light of that process. The government continually reviews land releases whenever new information comes to light.

The final point I would like to make in relation to east O'Malley-as Ms Tucker raised it-is that significant areas of east O'Malley have already been protected. I saw a letter in the paper the other day that claimed that the government was building on Canberra Nature Park when it was proposing to build east O'Malley. That is simply not the case. East O'Malley is not part of Canberra Nature Park; it is residential land, designated as such under the Territory Plan.

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