Page 5552 - Week 17 - Wednesday, 4 December 1991
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sensible statement of what the criteria should be. That removes from the Minister an area of discretion, an area in which there could be injected some lack of predictability as to the outcome. For that reason I support Mr Jensen in this case.
MR WOOD (Minister for Education and the Arts and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (3.58): Mr Speaker, I can take Mr Kaine's point and say that the criteria that have been suggested might be very sensible, and perhaps they are; but that does not mean to say that putting them firmly into a schedule is the way to go. We can have these criteria; they will be there, under ministerial discretion, and they will be as good criteria. Your argument will hold, whichever way you go.
What you have done is to give yourself a vote of no confidence; that you would be capable of some pre-emptory action, some destructive action, which I reject anyway because I do not think anybody in this Assembly would connive, which is what it would have to be, in order to change some criteria - - -
Mr Kaine: It would just be human error, Minister.
MR WOOD: No, it would not be human error. A set of criteria would be clearly established and it would need connivance in order to change it to get the bulldozers in to knock down a house. The reverse case applies. What you may well have done by establishing what appears now to be a sensible set of criteria, putting it down there so that it cannot be changed rather more expeditiously, is to leave out something sensible, leave a loophole there that you cannot fill in quickly enough to accommodate a particular circumstance that might arise.
I think you have done this the wrong way around. I do not know whether there are loopholes. If there are, some people here and there will find them. But you have built further inflexibility into this system that is quite undesirable. I am a little concerned that here and there throughout this planning legislation the Liberals are opting for a more rigid line, the concrete line of the Residents Rally.
Mr Kaine: For a very sensible outcome. If I am being attacked from both sides I must be doing something right. That is all I can say.
MR WOOD: Well, I think you have made quite a mistake on this occasion. You would well know that throughout legislation here and elsewhere the term "determined criteria" and the use of regulations is a common, successful and well accepted means of proceeding. You now say that that is not satisfactory. I am very surprised.
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