Page 954 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 26 July 1989
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responsible to try to ensure that we go about the business of the Assembly in as reasonably effective a way as we can. In my view, it does not involve having two bodies, namely the Government and the standing committee, carrying out the same task. As I have said before, the Government is obliged by law to carry out this task.
Mr Jensen referred to the Government as possibly being the sole arbiter on this matter. With all due respect to Mr Jensen, that is clearly nonsense. There is no way in the world that the Government would seek to be, or could in fact be, the sole arbiter on this matter. We have given clear undertakings on consultation, and it seems to me much more appropriate that the Standing Committee on Planning, Development and Infrastructure be asked to consider the Government's work on this matter once we have got a product for the committee to look at. I am only too happy for that to occur. Indeed there would be something gravely wrong with our committee system if that did not occur.
You have my absolute undertaking that that committee will be involved and indeed that the groups named in part (2) of Mr Jensen's motion will all have ample opportunity to take part in that consultation process.
I think that any elected government has the right to set its own policies and to draw up its own drafting instructions, and I seek to do that on this important matter under the ACT (Planning and Land Management) Act. I do appreciate the urgency of this matter. I agree that it is an urgent matter that needs to be addressed very early, so I am prepared to give an undertaking that I will have prepared, by the end of October this year, the draft legislation that is required. Of course that draft legislation will be made available to the Standing Committee on Planning, Development and Infrastructure for its full comment.
I think it is also apparent to most people who have had anything to do with planning in the ACT that it is important that we have an integrated approach and that the planning legislation deals not only with appeals and so on, which Mr Jensen has drawn attention to, which are very important issues, but also with environment matters and with heritage matters.
It is not a simple or straightforward task to deal with this legislation. It is, however, as Mr Jensen suggests by his motion, an urgent task, and this Assembly has my undertaking to move forward very rapidly on that task and to involve the Standing Committee on Planning, Development and Infrastructure at the first appropriate stage. But I repeat, I do not consider it appropriate to ask that committee to do the Government's job for it. That would be a waste of resources.
MR HUMPHRIES (12.20): Mr Speaker, I shall be very brief. I have listened intently to what Mr Jensen has had to say and
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