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

TINK () (): I rise today to speak about how the deteriorating health of Australia's environment, due to the pressures of climate change, habitat loss, invasive species and pollution, is impacting my electorate of North Sydney. The North Sydney area has always been seen as the green belt around the CBD and Sydney Harbour, but the grim reality is that our green spaces are shrinking, not only across my electorate but right across the state.

TheState of the environment report published in 2021, but only released by the new environment minister last month, was a shocking read. It provided a long list of animal and plant species in decline, habitat destruction and clearing, introduced species thriving and diseases and invasive pests wreaking havoc on our land. The report is clear: our climate is changing. We're experiencing more extreme high temperatures, more bushfires and more intense rain events. Sea temperatures are also continuing to rise. Each of these factors in turn affects the liveability of our cities.

Adding to the changing climate, most major Australian cities are growing at a faster rate than other developed cities. This is driving increased urban heat, congestion, pollution and waste, with each in turn impacting our urban areas and biodiversity, green and blue spaces alike. A tree canopy cover of at least 30 per cent in a neighbourhood is needed to provide benefits such as urban cooling and resilience to heat waves, yet more than half of Sydney's councils have lost urban forest cover since 2013. The resilience and sustainability of the places we live in are being challenged.

To effectively respond to these challenges, it will be critical for all three levels of government to collaborate and take a holistic nationwide approach to developing resilient frameworks that not only sustain our cities but regenerate them. In my electorate of North Sydney, there are three major infrastructure projects for which we are not seeing effective, modern, resilient planning responses. They are the upgrade to the Warringah Freeway, the Western Harbour Tunnel and the Beaches Link. We must not take these projects individually but look at them together and understand their cumulative impacts.

The North Sydney community has been largely ignored in a rushed consultation process, and our residents are going to lose out. From the outset, these projects have been yet another example of short-term thinking, using infrastructure approaches from the 1960s to plan for tomorrow. Frustratingly, North Sydney will pay the price, with more traffic congestion on our streets, more air pollution around our schools, a loss of more than 3½ thousand trees, mangroves and sea grasses and the loss of 15,000 square metres of green space from our parks and reserves like Cammeray Park and Flat Rock Gully.

The Warringah Freeway upgrade is already underway, but, on behalf of my community, I call for the two tunnel projects to be suspended until the community can be sure that all viable alternatives have been explored and the potential impacts of these projects, as they currently exist, are mitigated. We know we need solutions. We just wonder whether we've found the right ones. To this point, I wish to thank those in this space, particularly Minister Gallagher and Minister King and their teams, for confirming that there is currently no federal funding allocated for the Western Harbour Tunnel. The absence of such funding, I would suggest, further challenges the very basis of the project.

There are also a myriad of local developments, which constituents have raised with me, that will also have a negative impact on our green canopy and our natural and cultural heritage. For example, my community is opposed to Transport for NSW's proposed linear cycle ramp on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The ramp would have a serious and deleterious effect on the national heritage value of the bridge and its curtilages, as well as the trees and green spaces in Bradfield Park North. There is an alternative solution supported by North Sydney Council, the community and many organisations, if only the levels of government involved would listen to the community.

Plans are infinitely adaptable where political and community will align. It is time we start approaching major infrastructure projects like these differently, with transparency, true community consultation, sustainability and integrity at the heart of them. These are the remedies that North Sydney is seeking, and I look forward to seeing the response from the government, the environment and this parliament. We must, and we can, do better for our environment.