Page 3576 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 12 September 2017

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I was so very proud to be there among so many supporters and to have the honour to briefly speak and to put on the record, again, that every member of the ACT government, Labor and Greens, supports marriage equality. As we move into the period of receiving, filling in and submitting our postal surveys, I want to continue to encourage individuals and businesses to speak up for marriage equality, to speak up for human rights and for equal rights, and to speak up for love.

Environment—Mulligans Flat nature reserve

MS LEE (Kurrajong) (4.43): Madam Deputy Speaker, let me set the scene. It is pitch black with only red-light torches; it is cold, and every now and then you can hear rustles, birds calling and frogs singing. Suddenly, your guide says, “Ooh, I saw some silver eyes; come over this way.” She jogs off to a spot about five metres away and crouches down. You follow, because the whole point is to see something new. “Oh no, it’s disappeared,” she says. “What is it? What is it?” I ask. “A huntsman.” Needless to say, after that I became a little suspicious every time our guide said, “Look over here.”

A few weeks ago my team and I were treated to a twilight tour of Mulligans Flat sanctuary. It was timely that we had booked this tour just before Ms Orr’s motion in the Assembly last week about the unique beauty of this nature reserve and how we can best utilise this asset to promote ecotourism.

Mulligans Flat was established in 1995 following a community-led campaign to protect the box gums, grassy woodlands and bird and wildlife population. Today it forms part of the ACT’s nature reserve system and is managed by the Mulligans Flat woodland sanctuary management subcommittee of the Woodlands and Wetlands Conservation Trust, which works for the ACT parks and conservation service to maintain and improve the sanctuary and its wildlife.

Collaboration between the ACT government, the ANU and the CSIRO, and funding from the federal Liberal government, has created a fully enclosed sanctuary so that it can be totally cat, fox and other predator free, allowing for the reintroduction of species, some of which had become extinct. In 2012 the eastern bettong was reintroduced, more than 100 years since it had been extinct in the wild on the mainland of Australia. Since then a number of other species have been reintroduced, including the New Holland mouse in 2013, the bush stone-curlew in 2014 and the eastern quoll in 2016.

My team and I were guided by the amazing team of guide Shoshana, volunteer Amy, and Alison from the woodlands and wetlands trust. One common element that exists in every tour or visit I make to our nature reserves is the dedication, the passion and the hard work ethic of our rangers, guides and volunteers, who give so much to make Canberra the great bush capital that it is. This twilight tour was no exception.

It was dark, it was cold and it was definitely out of my comfort zone—even outside of my electorate—but I could not have asked for a better evening. Sho, Amy and Alison were a wealth of knowledge, and I am fairly certain they must have had magic torches


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