Page 1360 - Week 05 - Thursday, 18 June 2020
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Part of my planning legislation which has been deferred for later consideration includes more protection for registered trees, so I am very hopeful on the basis of this motion that the Liberals will be supporting that as well.
In conclusion—no sarcasm intended at all—I seriously welcome the new tripartisan agreement that trees are good and that we need more of them. This truly is a good thing and a really positive moment for the Assembly. We need now to move past motions and move to on-the-ground action to plant more trees and, even more than that, to keep the trees we plant, those that have been planted and those that have been growing without human intervention. We need to keep these trees alive and healthy so that we can achieve the beautiful bush capital that we all want to live in.
MR COE (Yerrabi—Leader of the Opposition) (3.48): I of course am delighted to speak in support of this wonderful motion Ms Lee has put forward. It is interesting that it is the Canberra Liberals that are ambitious and putting forward what should be an achievable policy. But you have the naysayer over there—Mr Hi-vis to plant a tree—who says it is not possible. It is not possible to plant a million trees over ten years. It is in the too-hard basket. Horticulturalist Steel comes out on a day and says, “You know what? I’ve been down to Bunnings and it looks like it’s too expensive.” Well, I am afraid their lack of ambition, their lack of confidence in urban services and their lack of recognition of the problem was starkly on display.
I very much welcome Ms Le Couteur’s contribution to this debate. She pretty much signed up to the policy, and I very much welcome that. I note there are many other Canberrans who want an ambitious but realistic tree policy for the ACT. At the moment, things are going backwards—more trees are dying or being chopped down than are being planted. That is the reality of this government’s policy.
It is all very well for Ms Le Couteur to say the government has failed, the government should have done this and the government should have done that, but for 12 years on and off she has been propping up this government. She has to take her share of responsibility for the estate development code in the territory. They have had 12 years to heavy the government when it comes to the estate development code, but it has not been a priority. They could have easily demanded that in the lead-up to any budget or at the start of each term where they signed their lives away. But instead they did not prioritise it.
The Labor-Greens combo has not served the ACT well when it comes to the tree canopy, the number of trees or access to green space. The Canberra Liberals think it is reasonable that somebody in the bush capital should be able to live in something that resembles the bush capital. In contrast, the planning system we have and the leadership of those opposite has meant that the bush capital is not a reality for many people in the ACT.
It was in the too-hard basket. The government was too lazy and too tired to make sure that streets in new suburbs could have trees. That is why there are thousands of dwellings in the ACT that will never have a tree on the street, in the front yard or in the backyard. Never. When the history books are written about urban design and
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