Page 4226 - Week 14 - Thursday, 24 October 1991
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through a development oriented bureaucracy. The control should be directly to the Minister. The Chief Planner should answer directly to the Minister so that the Minister can then weigh up where we need development and where we need planning, so that the priorities are set there.
One cannot help wondering whether this draft Territory Plan is a result of a bureaucratic arrangement whereby it is quite clear that a planner's chain of command, his hierarchical responsibility, goes through a department that is concerned as much with development as with planning. Those decisions should be made by the Minister.
Mr Speaker, as part of the cognate debate, we have also had the opportunity to include the proposed environmental advisory council which I proposed and spoke of in November 1989. This proposed council was shelved under the Alliance Government but has remained on the notice paper. In Ms Follett's response to my motion, as Chief Minister of the first Follett Government, she said:
The Government regards Mr Moore's proposal, that an environmental advisory council be established, as a highly constructive contribution to the current discussion about the way in which planning, development and environmental concerns should be handled in the future in the ACT.
With the draft Territory Plan and the new legislation, how to make that environmental council work - it does not require legislation to establish it, although it could be established under legislation - is an issue to be taken up and debated at this in-principle stage to determine whether that is now an appropriate way to marry the important environmental aspects with the concerns of the community in ensuring that appropriate development can go ahead. There will always be this conflict between those priorities that require balance. They are set out at page 2516 of the Hansard of 15 November 1989, and one can easily refer to those.
I see no reason to go through them. But I will point out that the council, as I perceived it, should have a core membership of five, appointed for a period of four years and chosen for their expertise in a relevant field. Two of those positions should be filled by nominees put forward by the Conservation Council of Canberra and the South East Region or the Australian Conservation Foundation, on the one hand, and either the Canberra Association for Regional Development or BOMA, on the other hand, or any other peak group agreed to in negotiations. I believe, Mr Speaker, that there is a major contribution to be made by including at this time an environmental advisory council, as I proposed in November 1989.
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