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The very constructive work done by a number of individuals in the Attorney-General's Department - I am pleased to see Ms Riordan here today; we did a lot of work from the early stages - has been recognised around Australia. The ACT model has been looked at with great interest. Mr Moore would be aware that, as I understand it, one of the issues in the charter of reform that the Independents in the New South Wales Parliament have drawn up for this parliamentary term is, in fact, a State-based Bill of Rights in New South Wales. I believe that the work done to date here is being looked at there. It is an issue that is being looked at broadly.

I would also acknowledge that there are areas where we could well go beyond the draft Bill as tabled. I hope that this debate can be spread over some time and that possibly the Bill can go to a committee rather than being dealt with swiftly. One issue that has been raised by some individuals, although we have not had any detailed mapping out of this - I notice that some work has been done in some of the German States, although I do not read German well and I do not have the drafts of this - is that we put in the Bill of Rights form some basic declaration as to environmental rights so that the Bill of Rights not only deals with the traditional civil liberties issue, the traditional rights of political equality and the so-called second generation rights that might be described more as economic or social rights - we have addressed some of those, such as the right to education - but goes further to what some academics have been referring to as third generation rights, such as the right to a clean environment and the right to a non-polluting process.

It is an interesting debate that the general political consensus has moved on from the basic right to free speech and the right to freedom from discrimination to some basic environmental rights. I very much welcome working with the Greens here and perhaps hearing some views from their national organisation. I know that a lot of thought has been given to this in various forums. We could perhaps expand the Bill from its current form to look at a chapter dealing with environmental rights. The basic enforcement mechanisms for environmental issues will remain bodies like the Commissioner for the Environment. It will remain for legislators to be vigilant in relation to individual pieces of legislation. But the process of entrenching some basic statements about the importance of a right to a clean environment can be significant and can elevate to the higher level of an entrenched fundamental principle that concept which perhaps has emerged from obscurity to be the political norm. I would welcome looking at that. Again, a committee may be the best process for resolving that.

Mr Speaker, the Bill of Rights Bill is a significant step in constitutional development in Australia. The ACT Labor Government took this idea further than any other government had ever taken it, with a Bill very close to being ready to go forward and with a very clear commitment to proceed with that Bill. I would hope that this Assembly would look at this Bill not just as a party political issue but as one that could transcend party politics. I would certainly hope that the Independents and the Greens would look at this very carefully, bearing in mind that it is an issue being looked at in other parliaments. I would hope that the Liberal Party, while they might be a bit cool on the idea of pressing forward, would look at constructively refining the legislation and would be in a position such that, if it did go ahead, it could reflect the best advice available to members of the Assembly.

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