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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 3 Hansard (27 March) . . Page.. 732 ..

MR HUMPHRIES: You have been stripped of the planning portfolio and you have been stripped of the environment portfolio. I suggest that you do a bit of homework on this. If you look at the budget papers you will see that there are measures going on which directly touch on that issue. The first and most important of those is the production of integrated environment protection legislation, for the first time in this Territory, to give us - - -

Mr Wood: It is a long time coming. It was set up under my administration.

MR HUMPHRIES: I realise that you would have done it. If only you had had three more months you would have been there, Mr Wood. I realise that. Unfortunately, you were not, and it has fallen to us to do this. We have talked about it for the first time, and we are putting it in place for the first time. It is on our legislative program for the first time.

Mr Wood: When do we see it?

MR HUMPHRIES: We will see it before this Government ends its term, in this term of the Assembly. We will see it. We will not see just the draft; we will see the legislation in place. I am confident. That is quite important because up until today we have a discreet range of measures which are available to governments in this place to regulate the quality of water, and other things, which are not integrated, which are different in their operation, and which do not facilitate a strong, across-the-board and cogent attack on people or things that breach those high standards we set for ourselves in the Territory. We want to improve that mechanism for protection. That is why we are putting forward that legislation.

We also have other proposals specifically for protection of the ACT's water quality and waterways. Ms Horodny made some points in her comments about the lack of protection in certain specific areas, such as run-off from building sites in the ACT and so on. I certainly concede the need for us to improve the quality across the board in our response to these sorts of problems, but I do say that the ACT does have a very high level of protection for water quality already. I do not pretend that that is any reason to rest on our laurels, but I do argue that it is a very good reason for us to be prepared to build on that base rather than pretend that we are in a mess and we have to start to fix a problem which has been out of control. That is not the case. Let me make the point, if I make no other in this debate, that we do have a very high quality of water monitoring and water control in this Territory, which would compare very favourably with most other parts of this country. I dare say that it would compare favourably with any other part of this country.

Ms Horodny: Have you looked at Ginninderra Creek lately?

MR HUMPHRIES: Even in Ginninderra Creek. I think we have the best set of protections. Rather than run them down, which, with respect, was what Ms Horodny was doing, we should be prepared to build on those. We do that in a number of ways. This Government is committed, for example, towards further work on integrating its activities with the Murray-Darling Basin Commission. We want to introduce legislation,

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