Andrew Gee (Calare, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

We take many things for granted in this country. One of them is our freedoms; we take it for granted that we'll always have them. Our national prosperity is taken for granted all too often. Another thing that's often taken for granted is our environment. We just take it for granted that we'll always have fresh air to breathe, that the rain will always fall when we need it and that our land which has always sustained our regions and our country will always provide for us. But, like our freedoms and prosperity, we can't take our environment for granted.

My parents ran a wholesale and retail nursery; I grew up working in them and valuing our trees, native shrubs and native flora. They're so crucial in providing shade, stunning beauty and homes and food for our native wildlife and also in combating global warming. That's why last year I launched the Gee Tree Challenge, where we threw down the challenge to schools, community groups and not-for-profits to tell us what they'd do with 24 native trees in 2024. The winners were Deb Porter and her wonderful team from the Bathurst Early Childhood Intervention Service and the team from St Joseph's Catholic Primary School at Manildra. We've already had a wonderful community tree planting at the Bathurst Early Childhood Intervention Service that involved students, staff and parents and the team from Charles Sturt University, and we'll be going out to St Joey's to do their planting soon. I thank Ian and Sue Rogan from the Millthorpe Garden Nursery for their support in this important initiative.

I pay tribute to some key organisations in the electorate of Calare doing such a huge amount of work to protect and care for our flora, fauna and land.

Firstly, Secret Creek Sanctuary—Secret Creek is situated just on the outskirts of Lithgow on the edge of the Blue Mountains. It was set up to provide a feral-animal-proof enclosure where endangered native species are protected from predators. The sanctuary is best known for the reintroduction of the eastern quoll to New South Wales in 2001, and it's also home to brush-tailed rock wallabies, potoroos, Tasmanian devils, tiger quolls, dingoes, koalas and a growing colony of endangered mountain pygmy possums. The sanctuary was almost destroyed in the devastating Black Summer bushfires, but, thanks to a number of state and federal grants, the sanctuary is being protected and revitalised with a new wildlife hospital and rehabilitation centre; a new cultural community and visitor centre; repairs to the sanctuary, which was damaged during the Black Summer blazes; and also upgrades to the camping facilities.

I also want to thank Trevor Evans and his family—he is the founder and owner of the Secret Creek Sanctuary—for his wonderful work. It's a passion. I want him to know how grateful the community is. It was an honour for the member for Bathurst, Paul Toole, and me to recently attend the sanctuary for a pre-opening of the new community centre.

I also wish to pay tribute to the hardworking team from Little River Landcare, which is based in Yeoval in the Cabonne shire. Their mission is to engage, empower and support the Little River community to manage and restore natural environments and to improve the sustainability of agricultural activities within the catchment. To date, they have successfully delivered $10 million worth of projects since 1998, one of which is the very successful Soil PET project, which stands for 'people, education and technology'. It's a pilot project involving soil testing right around the Little River catchment and beyond. It's designed to ensure that farmers are getting the best out of the land in an environmentally friendly and sustainable way, and it has been wildly successful. I'd like to pay tribute to the chair of Little River, Don Bruce; vice chair and long-term board member, Allan Nicholson; the secretary, Mel Kiel; the treasurer, Belinda Reynolds; and also Phoebe Gulliver, who is the CEO of Little River Landcare.

Lastly, I'd like to pay tribute to the hardworking team at Burrendong arboretum. The Burrendong Botanic Garden and Arboretum is situated on 164 acres just outside of Wellington and Stuart Town and Mumbil. It is basically a native flora reserve. It's a plant bank, and it currently houses over 50,000 specimens covering 2,000 species. The Friends of Burrendong Arboretum do a wonderful job in caring for it. I'd like to pay tribute to Alice and John Newton for their decades of service and also to Rachel MacSmith from the Burrendong Botanic Garden and Arboretum for the wonderful work they all do.

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