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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 8 Hansard (24 October) . . Page.. 1966 ..

Mrs Carnell: What money? That is the problem. We do not have any.

MR WOOD: Go and read the report. I will point out some aspects to you, Chief Minister. There is no area of Government initiative that Mr Humphries can point to. There were 51 recommendations - - -

Mr Humphries: Five hundred hectares of native grasslands, created since this Government came to office.

MR WOOD: Those grasslands were an outcome of the draft variation, and the revised draft variation, of the Tuggeranong Town Centre.

Mr Humphries: No, it was not. This is Gungahlin, you idiot.

MR WOOD: I am sorry; the Gungahlin Town Centre. The report provided strong impetus for further rapid progress for a better environment. It provides us with the advice on the way forward; but, for all Mr Humphries's platitudes, there is no action and progress is stalled. The Minister said that the Government response is directed at the long-term protection of the environment. He seems to have a very long-term protection in mind there. We want some rather quicker action than that. The majority of the recommendations - almost all of them - are supported; but without some action, without some funding to back up things, there is no support. There cannot be support without something happening.

The commissioner, when he set about writing this report, initially faced some problems, as he reported. I think these were some of the major comments that he made. He reported that he simply did not have enough data. He said that there is not an agreed set of indicators available by which he can make his judgments. He indicated that he would be looking for some of those locally, but mostly we needed a national set of agreed indicators. He also said that responsibility in the ACT was rather dispersed, and in his first year he did not find it easy to gather all of the data that he wanted. I quote from his comment on page 6 of his report:

That few parameters of condition are yet measured in the necessary number of places, or with the required frequency to give the comprehensive awareness of the state of the environment that would ultimately be expected of the ACT, is not surprising.

The indicators, the data, were simply not in place. The problem was simply that we did not know enough to make accurate statements of what we want. The report set out to remedy that situation in those five areas that are in the report and that Mr Berry mentioned.

Let me show you how the Minister has failed to deliver. I refer to recommendation 35. The Minister numbered them; they were not numbered in the report. Recommendation 35 requires the creation of a biological survey unit to establish and maintain an inventory of the flora and fauna of the ACT. That is to be found on page 10 of the report.

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