Page 411 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 15 February 2005
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seedlings which might not have survived the summer. To prevent making costly mistakes this year, we need to seriously question the shibboleths trotted out to justify the ACT remaining as a softwood producer. Our pine forests have imposed more costs on our economy than income. Even before the fires taxpayers were subsidising softwood management by over $2 million in 2002-03, for instance. If we replant and if the growing trees do not suffer misadventure by heavy, eroding downpours or wildfire, it will be a decade and a half at a minimum before we reap any financial benefits from pines and these pines will enter a market already saturated by oversupply.
While ACT Forests may argue that it needs a pine plantation to manage in order to justify its existence, we would suggest that labour market trends indicate that the emerging new employment opportunities are generated in sustainable industries, such as native plantation forest management, biodiversity monitoring and research, bioharvesting in native ecosystems, as well as the flow-on benefits with improved recreation and horticultural amenity in the vicinity of our city, the Bush Capital.
Given that the government is committing so much money to the new water strategy and considering undertaking very expensive capital works, such as dam building or dam wall extensions, we hope that it is prepared to consider negotiating with the insurance company over the best possible outcome for revegetating the water supply catchments in our region. To do otherwise would seem to contradict all efforts to secure quality water in the ACT.
To reiterate, the fires, which were devastating to our community, have now presented an opportunity to rethink our land management. We can move out of an old mode of thinking which is economically and environmentally unsustainable and be the clever city that we like to call ourselves. If a rich resourceful city like ours cannot deal with the land use and employment prospects of managing our catchments, who can? If our insurance policy says we must replant in order to be paid full value, then we need to look at the fine print and see where it says that we must replant with exactly the same species that caused the problem in the first place.
Just imagine if we could implement the latest research into mixed land use, combining woodland and grassland with possibilities for some grazing and selective harvesting, where appropriate, as well as providing recreation and public access. In this territory we have the expertise and the community interest to place our catchment management in an ecologically sustainable framework. Let us learn from our experiences and embrace this opportunity to demonstrate world-best practice in protecting our water supply catchment with well-designed plantings and judicious regeneration to enable our catchments to do their job of supplying quality water to our rivers.
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Attorney-General, Minister for Environment and Minister for Arts, Heritage and Indigenous Affairs) (4.11): I thank Dr Foskey for proposing this matter of public importance. It is indeed a very important matter and very topical as a consequence, of course, of the range of circumstances in which we find ourselves: the destruction of the forests; the continuing drought and the stress that our water catchments continue to suffer. So a matter of public importance on the role of native vegetation and maintaining catchments for water quality is indeed very timely. It is an issue that the community is very interested in and I think it is appropriate that we discuss the issue. So I thank Dr Foskey for proposing the matter.
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