Mona Vale Road Land Development

Mr HUMPHERSON (Davidson) [5.35 p.m.]: I want to update the House about the land on Mona Vale Road, Terrey Hills, that is owned by the Aboriginal land council. Warringah Council has actively supported preservation of the land. I give my thanks to the Mayor, Peter Moxham, the General Manager, Dennis Smith, Monica Borroni and councillors Phil Coleman and Julie Sutton, all of whom have been very active in seeking to find a long-term solution to preserve the land from development and/or clearing and to create an international park. I acknowledge the active support of the Mayor of Ku-ring-gai, Tony Hall, who was very active, along with councillor Julie Sutton, in supporting two public rallies on the site.

Warringah Council has called for a report to assess the environmental characteristics of the land. That report ought to be tabled at council on 26 October - next Tuesday. Hopefully emanating from that report will be an application to the Federal Government through the Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator Hill, to seek Federal funding in some form for acquisition of the land. I acknowledge that the Aboriginal land council responded to the very strong public concern about the sale of the land and withdrew the land from sale to allow a number of options to be pursued. Naturally, I expressed strong disquiet about the actions of the land council up to that point, but I would be disingenuous not to acknowledge that the land council was prepared to respond to community concern and withdraw the land from sale.

Warringah Council has also kept the land council up to date on its progress. The State Minister for the Environment was good enough in the earlier stages to indicate that the Government was prepared to exchange for the Aboriginal land some land owned by the National Parks and Wildlife Service at Cottage Point which has low conservation value. The land council refused. It expressed a number of reservations about doing that. I ask the Minister today to consider another avenue - and I have asked the council to pursue this. The Minister could transfer the Cottage Point land to Warringah
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Council on the condition that it sells the land and uses the revenue from the sale to acquire the council land along Mona Vale Road. Following that, the land could be transferred back to the National Parks and Wildlife Service and be integrated into the national park.

Naturally, any surplus from the sale of the Cottage Point land would be transferred back to the National Parks and Wildlife Service. The council may need to cover the period between the acquisition of the Aboriginal land council land and sale of the Cottage Point land, owned by the National Parks and Wildlife Service, with a loan. I hope that the Minister for the Environment and the Minister for Local Government will assist Warringah Council if it is prepared to pursue that course.

The Council may not consider that option unless the Minister for the Environment is prepared to sanction the same. The Minister has been prepared to put the Cottage Point land on the negotiating table, but this particular option and related steps have not been fully considered. I ask the Minister to consider this option as a matter of some urgency and give Warringah Council an opportunity to solve the problem in that way.

Finally, I pay tribute to the very active Save Mona Vale Road Corridor Committee, which is representative of the community in trying to achieve preservation of the land. I pay tribute also to Nancy Woods, from Terrey Hills, who spoke at the last rally. She is a member of the Aboriginal land council and a member of the Aboriginal community. She spoke strongly in favour of preservation of the land and, as a local, fully recognised the representative views of the Warringah residents that it ought to be preserved.