Mr MILLS - 2000-05-16
Many residents of Palmerston on their way home of an evening will see street lights in the bush. I understand that these are on Wishart Road in an attempt to combat biting midges. I am sure constituents, as well as myself, would like to know how this experiment is going.
ANSWER
Mr Speaker, those of us who catch fish, as opposed to those who pretend to, would know that where you find barramundi often you find biting midges. They are a terrible pest in terms of discomfort, not only to the fishermen, but to people in Darwin who live near the mangrove margin because these pesky little critters can travel 2 km, and are known to do so, and cause a nuisance. They are not necessarily a health hazard, unless you scratch and scratch and make a big hole in your arm. However, they are definitely very high nuisance value.
We are trialling a new technique. We have put up 20 poles along Wishart Road. We will be using a variety of fluorescent tubes, including the ultraviolet, the normal white fluorescent tube, and the traditional metal halide and sodium vapour street lights that you see around Darwin. We will be trialling them at different levels, and seeing if we can do some midge counts on them, to see whether they have the effect of distracting midges away from the near suburbs in that area.
The trials may well fail. But it is an indicator of this government’s capacity to take risk, to research, to make sure that we are doing the best for our residents, that we are prepared to put the next 6 or so months of the dry season, on every spring tide, testing these different lights.
With 2 spring tides every month, as you know, that gives us an opportunity for a dozen or so tests. We hope to trial the best, and sometime in the later part of this year I hope to be able to bring the results to this parliament.
It is a cooperative event between my colleague the Minister for Lands, Planning and Environment and myself. I am also pleased to note that the gentleman who is running the project has a PhD from our own NT University, where, as part of his PhD - and he graduated last Thursday with a doctorate - he did research of this type. That is a really good accolade for our university. It is turning out industry-ready practitioners who are knowledgeable about this place and who, in the course of their studies, have undertaken appropriate studies that can be deployed directly into the industry.
I commend Dr Shivas. For those people who drive Wishart Road - and I was there last night, there are thousands commuting in and out of Darwin - the lights are not pointing the wrong way. There was some comment earlier that they should be pointing towards the road and not the bush but that is not the case. I hope that in the next 6 months or so the Territory has yet again invented an innovative solution to better the lifestyle of Territorians.
ANSWER
Mr Speaker, those of us who catch fish, as opposed to those who pretend to, would know that where you find barramundi often you find biting midges. They are a terrible pest in terms of discomfort, not only to the fishermen, but to people in Darwin who live near the mangrove margin because these pesky little critters can travel 2 km, and are known to do so, and cause a nuisance. They are not necessarily a health hazard, unless you scratch and scratch and make a big hole in your arm. However, they are definitely very high nuisance value.
We are trialling a new technique. We have put up 20 poles along Wishart Road. We will be using a variety of fluorescent tubes, including the ultraviolet, the normal white fluorescent tube, and the traditional metal halide and sodium vapour street lights that you see around Darwin. We will be trialling them at different levels, and seeing if we can do some midge counts on them, to see whether they have the effect of distracting midges away from the near suburbs in that area.
The trials may well fail. But it is an indicator of this government’s capacity to take risk, to research, to make sure that we are doing the best for our residents, that we are prepared to put the next 6 or so months of the dry season, on every spring tide, testing these different lights.
With 2 spring tides every month, as you know, that gives us an opportunity for a dozen or so tests. We hope to trial the best, and sometime in the later part of this year I hope to be able to bring the results to this parliament.
It is a cooperative event between my colleague the Minister for Lands, Planning and Environment and myself. I am also pleased to note that the gentleman who is running the project has a PhD from our own NT University, where, as part of his PhD - and he graduated last Thursday with a doctorate - he did research of this type. That is a really good accolade for our university. It is turning out industry-ready practitioners who are knowledgeable about this place and who, in the course of their studies, have undertaken appropriate studies that can be deployed directly into the industry.
I commend Dr Shivas. For those people who drive Wishart Road - and I was there last night, there are thousands commuting in and out of Darwin - the lights are not pointing the wrong way. There was some comment earlier that they should be pointing towards the road and not the bush but that is not the case. I hope that in the next 6 months or so the Territory has yet again invented an innovative solution to better the lifestyle of Territorians.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016