Page 747 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 9 March 2005
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much more turbidity in the lower Cotter catchment in the last two years than millions of carp could have done in the lower Cotter catchment.
This is about our failing to address the issues. What we are doing today is trying to draw a line, take some time and actually look at what we are going to do for the future—for the future of that catchment, for the future of our drinking supply, because it is part of our water supply—and, because we are at the headwaters of the Murray-Darling Basin, the responsibility we have for the impact that will have on the Murrumbidgee River downstream and the Murray River downstream. Those areas are very important and I do not think enough attention has been given to these issues.
There is a fair swag of stuff in Shaping our territory about the options for forestry. It is very clear, if you read Shaping our territory, that this part of the report was written and predicated on, “We will be back with pines.” It seems to me and to many people in the community that no real thought was given to any alternative. There are bits and pieces in here that talk about the options—we could have some grass grazing and we could have other sorts of forestry and we could have a mixture of things—but it is all weighted so that we come to the obvious conclusion that the only thing that we can do is put pines back.
We have even got the ludicrous situation that the government, in Shaping our territory, actually suggests that by 2029 we will start to turn a profit in ACT Forests. I have lived in the ACT for a very long time and I have been involved in forest policy in the ACT since 1996 and I do not think that there was ever a time when ACT Forests turned a profit, either before self-government or post self-government. The only time it has turned a profit is when it has taken in insurance payments, in 2002 and 2003. That is the only time the books have been in the black. There were a whole lot of historical reasons why pines were planted in the Cotter catchment, and for the most part rational people would say that the decisions that were made in the twenties, thirties, forties and fifties are now outmoded and proven to be wrong.
Before the fires broke out, there was a study by ACIL Tasman, which looked at a previous study. The ACIL Tasman study was basically predicated on looking at the land east of the Murrumbidgee River, but most of what it said about land east of the Murrumbidgee River holds true for that west of the Murrumbidgee River, which is what we are particularly concerned about here. The analysis of ACIL Tasman was that the soils are too poor, the rainfall is too low and we will always have at best a very marginal forest industry. Added to that is what we are now seeing. As was said last week or the week before at the ABARE economic agricultural outlook conference, people in softwood forestry in the ACT cannot compete with New Zealand. It is becoming less and less an economic prospect, and as a result of this we need to draw a line in the sand, to consider the issues, to stop the forestry and table the documents.
MR SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment and Minister for Arts, Heritage and Indigenous Affairs) (10.47): This is indeed an important debate. The Cotter catchment is made up of two sections: the upper Cotter catchment, which drains into the Corin and Bendora reservoirs and falls into the Namadgi National Park and wilderness areas managed by Environment ACT, and the
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