Page 2755 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 28 June 2011
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of the budget papers. But perhaps more importantly, we need to find out, firstly, if the money allocated needs to be increased and, secondly, whether the resources that we do put towards our parks can be used in a more effective way by changing our management. In many ways I think that is what we are looking to the commissioner for the environment to give us some sense of.
One thing that has happened this year is that the operational plans for both weeds and vertebrate pest management have been made public. For the first time since I have been in this place, I can tell you that the ACT proposed to spend $177,000 on the management of pest species and $1.2 million on the management of weeds. It is a shame that we had to repeatedly ask to get this information. Up until this, each year we have had new funding announced, such as the $190,000 for rabbit management in the 2009 budget, not knowing the backdrop of the current funding against which this sat.
What is most interesting about both the operational management plans is that they both intrinsically acknowledge that there is not enough funding for either weeds or feral animals. I appreciate that there is some argument that funding for weed and feral animal control could be seen as a bottomless pit, but these plans explicitly acknowledge that high priority management cannot be undertaken due to a lack of funds. Perhaps this is why the former minister was a bit shy about handing information over. I am pleased that we can at last see some of the basic information that tells us what work is being done, how much it costs and what cannot be done and is honest about how much we are underfunding our parks management on these fronts.
I note that the estimates committee report recommends that this happens every year. I think that this would be a welcome addition to the transparency around the management of reserve areas, and I hope that the government responds positively to that recommendation and makes these plans easily accessible on the TAMS website. It is an area of great concern to the community, and I think that they would be reassured to see these plans so that they can check whether their local area will be targeted for work on weeds and feral animals and when this is likely to happen. I think it is also useful for the public to see the large amounts of work that are undertaken by PCL staff, and see that reflected in the reports. It is not inconsiderable, and it is clear that PCL are doing their absolute best with the money that they do have.
Focusing specifically on weeds, what the weeds operational plan told us this year was that there were high priority projects around the city that were going unfunded to the tune of about $614,000. This is quite a significant amount, and there were quite a number of projects that were tagged to be held over to the next financial year.
On that note of weed management, it was pleasing to see that there was an extra $500,000 a year put into weed management over the next four years in this budget. As per usual, it is hard to see if this will actually increase the level of annual weed funding to where it should be to meet all of the shortfalls in the operational plan or whether this will simply keep the funding levels on a par with the year just gone. I guess that when we see this year’s operational plan come out, we will be able to judge that more effectively.
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