Tuesday, 20 May 2025

Preston electorate trees

Nathan LAMBERT (Preston) (19:28): (1160) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Environment. The action I seek is for the minister to join me at the Northern Pipe Trail in Preston to see firsthand how our government is planting more trees, shrubs and ground cover to improve our urban environment and to discuss what further funding announced in today’s budget will help us achieve.

This is a topic that I have talked about at quite some length. There are some significant differences across Melbourne in the tree canopy cover that we see. The members for Prahran and Kew, who are with us at the moment, have some suburbs in their electorate that have famously very leafy environments with more than 25 per cent tree canopy. Then of course you come across to Preston and Reservoir which average about 8.5 per cent. That is partly a factor of geography, but there are still lots of parts of Preston and Reservoir that are quite leafy. We know now how to grow trees there, and we are very pleased that the new plan for Victoria sets an ambitious 30 per cent tree canopy target for all of our urban areas.

But of course in order to achieve that target we have to plant more trees, and that is exactly what we have been doing in Preston and Reservoir. Volunteers from Friends of Edwardes Lake have planted nearly 20,000 different native plants with the support of a $300,000 Green Links fund from our government. We appreciate also the support of Darebin council for that planting. Also, we were very pleased to see our federal Labor government re-elected, and they will make a further contribution to greening Edwardes Lake. On High Street trees funded through some of our government’s Living Local grants are growing nicely.

In Reservoir, on Cheddar Road, the median strip has been planted thanks to the Reservoir Suburban Revitalisation Board, an initiative of this government. In particular we have seen a huge transformation between Preston and Bell stations due to the level crossing removal project. We were there on the weekend with the Premier, and she was marvelling at how since she had last been there with me 2½ years ago 6 hectares of space had been transformed from a barren construction site into a green area with thousands and thousands of plants planted. The work unfortunately has been wonderful up to Preston station and then does peter out a bit as you had further north. That is why we are very excited that in the budget $190,000 has been allocated for more tree planting along the Northern Pipe Trail, in that exact location. That is why I am inviting the minister to join me, ideally perhaps with his bike helmet, and we can ride along to see how those trees will make a difference to our urban environment.

Many will be familiar with this government’s great trees for the west initiative. We are very pleased with this initiative, and I know the Minister for Veterans knows it well. This new initiative is a specific line item for more tree planting in Preston. We hope it is just the first of many towards us achieving our 30 per cent tree canopy target. We thank the minister for all his great work in the portfolio and for his consideration of this adjournment matter.