Page 3902 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 25 September 2019
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How can we actually deliver this? It will require practical action. It will require different actions in three different urban settings in Canberra: firstly, public places in existing suburbs; secondly, private land in existing suburbs; and, thirdly, our new suburbs.
In existing public places, permeability needs to be assessed, but I suspect that it is already quite high, because parks are usually highly permeable, and in most older suburbs grass verges exceed 30 per cent of the overall road reserve. However, in our older suburbs the tree stock has been declining. This can be turned around with budget investment, backed by a sensible plan. The good news is that, after years of Greens lobbying, this year’s ACT budget includes a commitment to funding more street trees and park trees. The bad news is that that is only an extra 17,000 trees, whereas we clearly need more trees—in the order of hundreds of thousands of trees. I understand that our urban forest is currently in the order of about 750,000 trees. Of course, to get from 20 per cent to 30 per cent, we are talking about a very large increase in trees, not just the small amount that is currently being funded. This is really good, but it is not quite enough yet—a long way from not quite enough yet.
On other land in existing suburbs, the challenge is more complex. We cannot just decide to do it, and do it as a government. When one house is replaced by another house, the new house is almost always larger. As part of the development process, almost always, the existing trees are removed and permeable surfaces like lawns shrink to a fraction of their former size. The same pattern is seen over and over again, wherever we see apartments, infrastructure or offices being built. Members will no doubt remember the large trees and permeable spaces that were lost when the former members’ car park was converted into a building site last year. That is typical of what is happening, unfortunately, throughout Canberra.
What is the solution? First, we need much stronger tree protection legislation to better protect existing trees. I asked a question about protecting existing trees earlier today, during question time, and it is not clear that we are doing a lot. Second, we need to make room for trees and permeable spaces during redevelopment. The good news is that the living infrastructure plan commits to action in both of these areas, building on my motion on trees that the Legislative Assembly passed in 2017.
The third setting is in new suburbs. This is one of the saddest areas, because clearly this is an area where the ACT government, through the planning system and the TCCS guidelines in terms of various bits of infrastructure, has control over how many trees there are, what space there is and, to a large extent, the permeable surfaces.
The bad news is that, as anyone who has seen the shocking aerial photographs of Wright and Coombs will know, we are simply not developing these with adequate room for trees or permeable spaces on public or private land. Most new suburban houses do not have room on their block for any sort of garden, let alone any self-respecting tree.
When you go out into the public realm, little bits of space have been left; I think someone has been praying that this would turn into trees. In a lot of cases they do not
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