Kylea Tink (North Sydney, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

The United Nations General Assembly has called this the 'Decade on Ecosystem Restoration', and protecting our urban tree canopy offers a unique opportunity at the local level to contribute to this vital mission. Around the world, cities are working to protect, maintain and restore precious urban ecosystems, which are critical for mental health, biodiversity and sustainable development. Yet, concerningly, my electorate of North Sydney is losing many hundreds of mature trees as they are pushed aside to make way for large infrastructure projects with opaque to non-existent disconnected business cases.

From Lane Cove to Cammeray, North Sydney to Neutral Bay, people are sharing their sense of despair with me, literally pleading for something to be done at the national level. They've told me things like, 'My children know I can't drive past the oval anymore—I get too upset,' or, 'Please add me to your list of devastated North Sydney residents who are horrified at what is unfolding before them.' Heartbreakingly, they're also consistently asking me, 'Please, I beg you—do everything in your power to limit the number of trees being removed.'

We cannot hope to address the climate crisis without all levels of government working together with our communities to protect urban trees. At this stage, the current destruction is being driven by state policy. I encourage the federal government to play a greater role in overseeing and coordinating our response to this challenge on a national scale. This is a decade to restore, not destroy.

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