Comments
made by Ms Lee Rhiannon on 31 May 2000 at the Parliament of NSW
BANKSTOWN BUSHLAND SOCIETY
Ms LEE RHIANNON [11.03 p.m.]: I wish to inform honourable
members about the work of the Bankstown Bushland Society. This
organisation provides a magnificent service to the people and
the environment of western Sydney. Members of this society are
vigilant in their activities to protect remnant bushland around
Bankstown and in other nearby suburbs. One of its current
campaigns centres on the Cooks River clay plain scrub forest in
Louisa Reserve. The society is battling the Olympic
Co-ordination Authority [OCA] and Bankstown City Council. It has
been told by the OCA's consultants that destroying part of this
tiny patch of scrub forest will be good for the remnant, as more
habitat will supposedly be created in adjacent areas. This is a
crude attempt to divert this campaign away from its important
objective to safeguard remnant forest and other nearby areas.
To compound the problem, Bankstown council—which, after five
years, has failed to produce a single management plan for any of
its bushland reserves, as is required under government
legislation—is installing a cricket field and clubhouse in
Louisa Reserve next to the Olympic velodrome, which will take
out large slices of scrub forest. This shows that preserving
intact remnants of bushland still rates at the bottom of the
list for councils such as Bankstown City Council. It also shows
why we need a group such as the Bankstown Bushland society. The
task for developers and their consultants is to downplay the
destruction of core habitat by talking up the benefits of
landscaping the buffer zones with native plants. Again, the
society is aware of this tactic and works to expose it and do
the best for the local environment and communities.
Both the council's cricket pitch and the OCA's criterion track
degrade the core scrub forest of the Louisa Reserve. Developers
argue that they have a solution when rare species are
threatened. The consolation prize of cosmetic regeneration is
trumpeted as a great ecological achievement. This is not only
illogical, it contravenes environmental planning legislation to
which all councils are obliged to adhere. Another tactic is to
talk up the benefits of translocating selected rare species.
This is a problem that the Bankstown Bushland Society is
increasingly confronting. This strategy has been advanced by
consultants at Rookwood to justify removal of vegetation there.
At nearby Weeroona Road the same consultants were brought in to
transplant an entire population of Acacia pubescens. This was
reported in the Daily Telegraph with great fanfare on 23
June 1999 as signalling a new age in development for Sydney. Yet
this damaging project, which, unfortunately, was supervised by
the National Parks and Wildlife Service, could claim only a 40
per cent survival rate. Again, it was hailed by the same daily
paper as an outstanding success. It is a cause for worry when a
development process comes up against remnant bushland. The
project has been submitted to an international forum as a model
for relocation of endangered species. It has been touted as a
solution, whereas it is part of the problem. The real damage
done is not so much to the red wattle, but once any listed rare
species is out of the way a large part of the remaining bush can
be unceremoniously disposed of.
The Greens strongly congratulate the society for its work in
this area, the many talks it organises for the local community
and its extensive bushwalk program. The society is a good model
of how a community organisation can deliver. On behalf of the
Greens I thank this organisation for keeping our office informed
of a range of issues that are important to the people of
Bankstown, Sydney and Australia. They are using some useful
tactics to ensure that a local community and bushland are not
ridden roughshod by the latest developers who come to town.
