Page 5012 - Week 17 - Tuesday, 11 December 1990
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Clauses 7 to 12, by leave, taken together, and agreed to.
Clause 13
MR MOORE (10.39): Mr Deputy Speaker, if we were just dealing with variations, then the notion of a 21-day specified period, I think, would be quite appropriate. Because we are dealing with a draft plan, including the background papers, and as we are talking about persons submitting written comments about the draft plan to the authority, the 21 days really is a very questionable time.
Granted the provision here says "not less than 21 days". Once again, we are supposed to put trust in the hands of the Government and make sure that they have the opportunity to prepare those and be able to get them out, so that they can rush things through, should they need to. That is certainly not appropriate. If I had had the opportunity to discuss with the Government what the appropriate period would be, I think, in fact, we could have come to a quite reasonable compromise on this. The question I am left with now is really: should we be talking about 60 days, or should we be talking, perhaps, about 50 days, or 40 days? Unfortunately we have not had the opportunity to discuss this with this Government. I get the feeling that, once again, they are going to use their numbers.
Mr Jensen: Not less than 21.
MR MOORE: Mr Jensen interjects, "Not less than 21". If "Menhir" over there - that is M-E-N-H-I-R - had heard me, he would know that not just two minutes ago I said that I recognised that it is "not less than 21 days", but you are asking the community to trust you and to trust your authority on that. Mr Jensen, surely you can remember the days when you and I sat together in the old NCDC building, and various venues that were set up by the NCDC, where we discussed such matters as this and had reasonable responses and responsible response times to such plans and to such variations.
As I said, I accept that a 21-day period does make some sense. In this case, surely we should be looking more at 45 days rather than 21 days. I think that is a most appropriate way to approach it. I think it is an appropriate time then, Mr Deputy Speaker, with reference to clause 13, for me to move that in 13(1)(a) and (b) we change the number of days to read 45 rather than 21. I will appeal to the Chief Minister and to the Deputy Chief Minister, who organises Government business, to whip around and get agreement on a 45-day period, which would be a logical and rational way to go and would show acceptance of the bipartisan approach that we have taken to this Bill as a whole.
On the other hand, I emphasise that the easiest way to deal with this is to bring the Bill back on Thursday and to resolve each one of these issues so that I am not forced to
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