Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Perth has a proud and green heart, and tonight that heart is heavy with a sadness that really cuts to the core. We value, we love, our precious green spaces with a unique intensity, particularly because, given our very, very hot summers, they are some of the few places that we can get into the shade.

Hyde Park in particular lives in the heart of so many in the Perth metro area as that one space, often, on that kind of day, where you can take a stroll around in the shade and gather your thoughts. I've done that many times, with many a good friend—entering the park, wondering how I was going to solve a problem, strolling around with somebody that I care about and finding a solution by the end of it.

Kings Park is, I will shamelessly and parochially say, one of the most beautiful places in Australia. The opportunity to visit that space and to watch families play together, watch people meet for the first time and watch people say 'I do' under the wonderful fig trees—it is like nothing anywhere else in the world.

It is not just in those iconic spaces. Anyone that's ever visited the Perth Zoo knows the experience of dodging beneath the trees there, wondering if you're going to be pooed on by a bird as you eat an ice cream—or taking the opportunity to take a stroll around Lake Claremont and just breathe for a moment. It is part of our identity as a community to be able to visit these spaces, breathe in, breathe out, and reflect on the joy of nature.

I share this with the Senate tonight with a deep sadness because those spaces right now are sick. Those trees, the veins of those green spaces that hold them together, are dying. Now, as a Green, when I hear that green space is under threat, my response is to ask: Where is the dozer to jump in front of? When do we lock on? When do we build together the community campaign? Yet in this instance that's not possible because the threat to these trees, what's killing them, is not developers or greedy corporations. No, no. Just this once, it is actually an invasive beetle species for which the only treatment is the complete and total removal of the trees.

Let's just put this in context. This means that, in places like Hyde Park, entire sections of bushland that are currently home to nesting birds and that literally form the centre of the park will have to be completely demolished. Hundred-year-old Moreton Bay fig trees that have stood and watched so much around them change will now be brought down.

The reality is that there is not currently money allocated at any level of government to knit these spaces back together, and that's got to change. There needs to be urgent action from the federal government, supplying the funds to the City of Vincent and to the City of Perth, to help these spaces and the communities that rely on them recover. We cannot allow these precious green spaces to simply be left empty and to fill with weeds and rubbish. Now, Labor has representatives at every level of government in these spaces. They need to make a firm commitment—and join with the Greens in making that commitment—to provide the funding that is needed to restore these green spaces to their former glory.