The Council makes the laws and administers them. That means that they can choose to enforce or waive them. Of course they are going to waive them for themselves and justify it by saying it is for the public benefit.

However, Council will not decide that it benefits the public for a business or individual to buy and use land with trees on it. They will use the fact that you have gone to so much trouble to plant them, with funding from them, as well as the notion that they were planted in the first place to make more "green space", as reasons to deny use of that land to private interests (us). Except for certain very big private interests, who probably don't even live here, who also "benefit the public"  - with indoor shopping complexes and apartment blocks.

There is the reason volunteers plant trees for the Council. It sets aside land exclusively for the use of the government and favoured corporations. If you want to build a house or a business, sorry! We didn't plant those trees for nothing. We need green space. But if "we need" more government infrastructure or more apartments or shopping complexes, look out!

For example, creating "green spaces" in every available area and closing it off to productive uses drives land prices and rates up. This makes properties in the city less affordable - puts them out of reach of more and more people. Then the government announces that there is too big a gap between incomes of richer and poorer people in the city. Low-inome people are languishing in low-rent accommodation (which is also getting more expensive due to rate increases) and only the "wealthy" (and struggling middle-income home-owners) can afford to own houses or apartments in the city. So the government will build "affordable housing", i.e. housing which those struggling middle-income home-owners will help to pay for on top of the rates for their own homes. Build it where? We can either use some "green space" - knock down some of the trees "greening groups" have planted there, or we can encroach on more of the space left over from planting green spaces and drive property prices (and rates) further up. And on and on it goes. Green spaces and affordable housing further widen the city income gap it claims to be addressing. They don't make the city more liveable, they make it harder to afford to live there are all.

We don't genuinely need to plant those trees. Whenever you are out, look around you - look around your own street and the rest of your suburb. The streetscapes are dominated by trees. Look at an aerial photograph of Brisbane and try to find an area without trees. Look at the CBD. Brisbane is already green where there are buildings.

http://www.ourbrisbane.com/maps

And do remember that Brisbane is a city.

"Government is not eloquence, is not reason. It is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."

- George Washington, first president of the United States.