Page 5577 - Week 17 - Wednesday, 4 December 1991
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(a) make copies of the preliminary assessment available for inspection and purchase at the places and times specified in the notice; and
(b) give a copy of the preliminary assessment, without charge, to the Librarian, ACT Library Service and to the Conservation Council of the South-East Region and Canberra (Inc.).".
I should start by pointing out that originally I asked the drafting office to include a provision to make a copy available to the Library Service and the "peak conservation body". They were not able to find a satisfactory way to include the "peak conservation body" that would not cause problems later. In the end, I felt it better to identify the current peak conservation body for the ACT, the Conservation Council of the South-East Region and Canberra (Inc.). If that body dissolves for some reason, then I am given to understand by the Parliamentary Counsel that it would automatically be replaced by another body taking its position.
One of the possibilities I am trying to deal with is the ability to make copies of a preliminary assessment available to members, not just on the basis that they can purchase them or get them from a library. The assessment may well be a very thick document and, in responding to it, it is not enough to read it and put it back. My draft Territory Plan here, for instance, has tags on it and is highlighted and so on, which is not an appropriate way to treat something in a library.
It is important that people who are interested have a copy available. The people who are clearly going to be most interested are those in the peak group involved in environmental issues. On face value, it would appear that to purchase such a document would be a reasonable thing, and certainly this Assembly, from its previous votes, would consider it to be a reasonable thing. However, it did occur to me that if I did not want the environmental body to comment too closely on a proposal, or a series of proposals, my methodology would be to take a series of photos - say, 15 to 30 photos - and include them in an assessment, which would be a perfectly sensible and reasonable thing to do. Having done that, you colour photocopy those at, depending on the size of the page, anything up to $3 or $5. That could make for a preliminary assessment that costs somewhere between $100 and $150.
That methodology would be available. One way around that is to identify which copies should be made available, without going to extremes. The attempt here is not to go to an extreme but simply to say that the proponent must
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