A Greens senator is planning to bulldoze dozens of native trees and local flora around her investment property in order to build three luxury homes at the heart of one of the biggest koala habitats in the state.
The party’s deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi and her husband will knock down 20 trees at her Port Macquarie investment property and subdivide it to build three double-storey townhouses.
The couple paid $250,000 for the home in 2001, with houses now being sold in the upmarket area of the town for well over $1million.
A development application approved by the Port Macquarie Hastings Council in May estimated the cost of the development of the property for $1.5million.
The architecturally designed plans will require the removal of most of the trees at the property including a hollow-bearing tree, which provides a habitat for native animals, council documents said.
Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi (pictured) is clearing native trees and vegetation in order to build luxury townhouses
The Greens deputy leader and her husband will knock down 20 trees at her investment property (pictured) and subdivide it
An ecological report tendered to council said the plans ‘will result in the loss of the majority of vegetation on the site’ near Lighthouse Beach.
‘The development will require the removal of native and exotic vegetation on the site. Tree removal comprises planted ornamental trees and native species including Figs, Guioa, Tuckeroo, fruit trees and Tree Ferns,’ it read.
‘Up to 20 native trees and shrubs will require removal, as well as ornamental plantings.’
Port Macquarie boasts one of New South Wales’s biggest populations of koalas – about 2,000 of them live there – and hosts one of Australia’s best known koala hospitals.
Land clearing is one of the key reasons why the endangered marsupial is under threat, with the NSW Department of Planning and Environment saying they are on target to be extinct in the wild by 2050.
An ecological assessment conducted for Ms Faruqi’s development application found there were no koala food trees on the site. However, the property had several ‘reasonably fresh’ koala droppings were found on the boundary of the property.
The study found the development is ‘unlikely to have any significant adverse impacts on the local population’ but noted the greater area ‘contains a potential foraging resource’.
Ms Faruqi has owned the Port Macquarie investment home with her husband since 2001
An ecological report tendered to council said the plans ‘will result in the loss of the majority of vegetation on the site’ including native and exotic vegetation and a hollow-bearing tree, which provides a habitat for native animals
The report claimed ‘threatened… species’ would rely ‘on adjacent and nearby habitats to fulfil their lifecycle requirements’ once the development was carried out.
A number of measures were outlined in the report to reduce the impact of the development on ‘flora, fauna and ecological communities’.
‘These include pre-clearing surveys and clearing supervision, weed control, and replacement fauna nest boxes,’ the report said.
A spokesperson for the Greens senator claimed that her application met ‘all ecological requirements’.
The senator and her husband bought their house for $250,000 in October 2001 but Port Macquarie’s median house price is now $851,159, CoreLogic data shows.
Their investment property near Lighthouse Beach is in a more upmarket area, where houses near the water typically sell at prices in the seven figures.
Ms Faruqi has previously been critical of past state governments allowing native forests to be logged and koala habitats to be cleared.
As a state upper house MP in 2016, she opposed the duplication of the Pacific Highway on the NSW north coast because a koala habitat would have been cleared.
She insisted the-then NSW Coalition government headed by Mike Baird consider alternate options for the highway route.
‘Koala populations around the state are in decline, with NSW koala numbers plummeting by a third since 1990,’ she said.
‘We have to be smarter than this and not make lazy decisions that jeopardise their future.’
Ms Faruqi has declared four properties including an investment home in Beaconsfield. A spokesperson from her office said the development at her property met ‘all ecological requirements’
The sub-division plans at Senator Faruqi’s house add two further properties to her portfolio.
She has declared four properties on the parliamentary register of interests.
This includes two in Beaconsfield, in inner Sydney – one of which is an investment – and a 500sqm parcel of land in Lahore, Pakistan.
She did not reveal whether the development would provide more affordable housing for renters.
The Greens have continuously blocked Labor’s $10billion Housing Australia Future Fund, which would see the government build 30,000 new social and affordable housing units.
The party have demanded the commonwealth freeze rents for two years and have future rent increases capped at two per cent every two years.
This is despite the fact the federal government cannot freeze or cap rents under the Constitution. Only the states and territories can cap or freeze rents.
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