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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 2 Hansard (28 February) . . Page.. 388 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

That would be a concern to me as a person who believes that, overall, Australia needs to be developing uniformity and greater consistency in practices across jurisdictions on matters of this kind. There is no strong reason why, as was the case until not so long ago in the ACT, a chemical that was banned in one jurisdiction should be easily obtainable across the border. Some quite dangerous chemicals were available in New South Wales, and it was possible for people to go across the border, buy them in Queanbeyan and come back and use them in the ACT pretty well with impunity. Mr Speaker, if that is not what is generally envisaged by this process, then I certainly see no problems with the inquiry and I welcome it.

The question of weeds generally is a matter that has been on the Government's mind quite considerably in the last few months. Indeed, just a week or so ago I was able to release the draft ACT weeds strategy, which for the first time has laid out a very comprehensive examination of the options we have as a community to start to develop a way of reducing the quite considerable explosion we have seen in recent years of non-indigenous plant forms which you can describe as weeds or other flora, as well as fauna which can be called pests which need to be controlled and which I think we as a community need to have a much greater level of reaction to than has been the case in the past.

The weeds strategy is essentially a shopping list of options and issues that we can take up. We will need to determine what things from that list we can do in the immediate term and how we develop them. I urge members of the Assembly to take the opportunity to look at the strategy, to input to the process of consultation that is now taking place on the strategy and to give us some feedback on what things on that shopping list are more important to be buying right now, so that in the coming budget we can develop an approach that will take up the most important issues and have them acted upon immediately.

Mr Berry: You should have taken that approach of a bit more consultation on the urban native trees.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Berry has to find something to disagree with me on, so he has gone to another issue altogether. At last sight, trees were not pests or weeds. I therefore think they are entirely outside the range of this debate. Mr Speaker, I hope that the inquiry will be productive. With rain of the kind we are now having, weeds continue to be a serious problem. I hope that we will be in a position to deal with the problems more efficaciously by virtue of a device such as this inquiry.

MR BERRY (11.50): Mr Humphries might like to record this. I think I heard him being a little critical of the process earlier. I tend to agree with him on that score. I will explain that. The Commissioner for the Environment is quite able to take this issue on as a statutory officer without this place moving a motion, or somebody in the community requesting this sort of inquiry. Had the Commissioner for the Environment done that, he would have had to deal with the matter within the resources that are available to him and in accordance with the priorities that he sets.

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