Page 649 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 9 March 2011
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12Â community gardens and continues to promote expansion of organic and communal gardening in our region.
COGS already receives support from the ACT government to obtain licences to operate on unused government land. Furthermore, financial assistance is already made available through the healthy cities grants program. I am not questioning whether that is enough or whether it is adequate, but I do not think we have seen yet a sufficient case to warrant more funding.
Seeking to legislate mandatory community gardens in all new residential developments is not sound policy. The very nature of community gardens is that they are driven by communities, not by government. I hold grave concerns that if any such motion were to succeed, we would see huge tracts of derelict land in those areas where residents may not wish to engage in communal gardening. Communal gardening has to be organic in every way. It has to be organic in that it is driven by the community. It must actually come from the people who want to be involved. It cannot come from the Greens member for Molonglo; it cannot come from this Assembly. I am not saying that the government does not have a role in this space, but it cannot be the driver of it. The community must be the driver of community gardens.
It is an interesting milestone in the Assembly where we have the Greens calling for more funding. This is perhaps the first 2012 election promise from the Greens. Not that they kept their 2008 ones, but their 2012 election promises have already begun. We already have them calling for a grants program, and we already have them calling for an additional public servant to help coordinate the expansion of community gardens in the ACT.
How many other motions have the Greens put on the notice paper this Assembly? Probably about 100, maybe more. Not many of them, if any, have explicitly called for a new staff member, as this motion has. Some of the motions have been quite frivolous in terms of their cost, but this motion explicitly asks for an additional person. What is it about community gardens that warrants an additional staff member without a business case? For how many other charities or community groups in Canberra are the Greens going to call for an additional staff member in the ACT government? If the Greens are going to move a motion, perhaps tomorrow or whenever, regarding another charity, will they call for new staff members? If not, why not? Is the cause of diabetes going to warrant another staff member in DHCS or in TAMS? Is autism a cause that warrants another person? What about organ donors? What about community housing? What about homelessness?
Ms Le Couteur has said that community gardens warrant the cost of another public servant. How many other community groups in Canberra warrant the cost of another public servant? From now on, every time the Greens put forward a motion supporting a community group that does not call for an additional public servant, we know they hold that organisation in lower regard than the community gardens cause. That is the benchmark they now have to go by. Every Wednesday on private members’ day when they have a motion supporting a community group, they have to now, surely, call for another public servant to assist with that organisation, otherwise it is a lesser cause than community gardens.
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