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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 8 Hansard (24 October) . . Page.. 1970 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

strong approach over the next 10 years. Perhaps the eradication of exotic weeds in the next 10 years will be one of the most important environmental initiatives in which governments will have to be engaged in order to ensure that we have an adequate level of protection for native plants and species.

Despite the comments of those opposite, we have again begun research into matters of kangaroo husbandry to deal with the recommendations made by the Kangaroo Advisory Committee. Mr Speaker, despite the comments of Mr Berry, every recommendation made by the committee in its recent report has been picked up and adopted. I met with the kangaroo committee last week and the committee indicated to me that, although they were concerned about the imagery of the comments that I made, or the expectations that I created by my comments, none of the specific actions that I proposed in that report differed from the view taken by the committee.

Mr Wood mentioned the monitoring of small particulates in the area. I remind Mr Wood that he and his party have attacked this Government for setting up a weather station in Tuggeranong to do just that - to check on small particulate matter in the atmosphere, among other things. Mr Berry even had the audacity to say, "Why do we need to be checking the weather in Tuggeranong?". What woeful ignorance of what goes on in the ACT other than in his electorate! We have maintained a comprehensive strategy for the management of contaminated sites - another matter of some considerable concern to people in places like Tuggeranong. That process is going to be very expensive, a multimillion dollar process over the next few years which will entail governments working closely with affected residents in those areas to achieve an outcome which is satisfactory from their point of view, and from the taxpayers' point of view a reasonable way of dealing with a very serious environmental problem.

At the legislative level, the most significant initiative of this Government is to set in place integrated environmental protection legislation during the life of this Assembly - a very important protection for the entire environment. At the moment the legislation administered and in many cases put in place by the former Government is ramshackle, poorly coordinated, and provides different sanctions for different sorts of activities which ought to be synchronised to a much greater degree.

Mr Speaker, Mr Berry returns to the chamber at last to hear some of these comments, but I am almost finished. I do not think anybody would think that the former Government's performance was very much worth while, certainly not in view of the C minus given to it by the World Wide Fund. People opposite would realise, if they had the honesty to admit it, that the process of environmental protection is a very multifaceted process which will entail governments having to set priorities amidst a number of competing demands. It is very easy to say, "You have not done this and you have not done that", but in respect of the 51 recommendations in here there are many paths that are being suggested to us. It would be very easy to suggest that we should be going down any one or all of them at any one time, but there simply are not the resources there to pick up all of these recommendations at the one time.

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