Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On Friday 11 March, along with the member for Chifley, I attended the Regenesis celebration event and the launch of the Regenesis tool kit at Mujar Bija Reserve in Blacktown which was incidentally featured in Sydney Morning Herald last week. The Regenesis program was championed by Blacktown City Council in partnership with its rural sister city Liverpool Plains Shire Council. It offsets local communities’ carbon emissions through environmental restoration and tree planting.

This program is another example of innovation by Blacktown City Council that consistently places it at the forefront of sustainability policy making. It is a fantastic grassroots initiative owned and supported by local residents. The Regenesis program is the first of its kind for local councils and has already seen the planting of 33 forests in the Blacktown and Liverpool Plains regions. The forests contain 220,000 native plants on more than 100 hectares and have been grown according to the carbon trading requirements established by the Kyoto protocol.

The Regenesis program engages with communities and businesses to enhance biodiversity, sequester carbon and enable the trading of carbon offset certificates through carbon emissions trading schemes. As Blacktown resident and Regenesis participant Mr Ron Roosen said, ‘My family can buy carbon offset certificates to offset the carbon footprint of our car. How good’s that?’ I could not agree with him more.

I congratulate all the volunteers involved in this program and the Blacktown and Liverpool Plains Shire councils for their efforts to future-proof local communities and help build a sustainable environment. It builds on Blacktown city’s vision of greening Blacktown developed over many decades and I commend the volunteerism of the people of Blacktown that have made it a reality.