Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 3 Hansard (27 March) . . Page.. 733 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

as I have mentioned, to provide protections across the board. We need to build up standards of protection which are based not just on a maintenance of present levels but on improvement over a period of time. We are in the process of implementing controls over things like the amount of water taken from private bores across the Territory. What Ms Horodny has suggested is already in train and I am confident that it will be done in the near future.

We need, overall, to build up a level of community support and understanding for what we are trying to do in this area to build up that level of protection. Things like Water Watch are already very successful in building that. Our grants program has been designed towards that kind of raised level of community protection in that process. I think it is a very positive process. I look forward to working with people like Ms Horodny and others in this process to make sure that we maintain that level of protection at very high levels and we build on it in the future.

MR WOOD (4.14): Madam Deputy Speaker, I am pleased to support this matter of public importance raised by the Greens which seeks to protect our waterways. My support is consistent with my actions as Minister. Contrary to the approach now taken by the current Minister, I took every opportunity to protect not just our waterways but our environment generally. Mr Humphries admonished me that I did not complete, in our last three months, our integrated environment strategy and the legislation that would carry through that protection. Then he went on to tell me that it ought to be in place within two years, so his timeframe is very slow.

This is a broad motion; but it has, in my view, no doubt a genesis in the dispute over jet skis on Lake Tuggeranong. The Minister should have said "No" instantly and emphatically when that proposal came to him. Today, as he did at a meeting in Tuggeranong, he falls back on the argument of process. "Allow the process", he says. That is not a bad argument, I might say. It is one I used many times when people challenged what I did as Minister. I said, "We are going through this process. I am not making the decision. The process will deliver a result". But there are limits to the decisions that the Minister should allow to go through that process.

I believe that the ACT community, over a long period, has established as a prime interest the protection of our environment. There is no question in this community that we want a peaceful city, a pollution-free city; one where we can enjoy our recreation without the noise, among the other problems, that the Tuggeranong proposal would have presented. The community has made that absolutely clear over a very long time. I might not always agree with the National Capital Planning Authority; but at the same time that the Minister would have said, "Let us have a trial", the NCPA said "No" to a five-day powerboat event on Lake Burley Griffin, where it has the authority.

Mr Moore: They are very different, though, are they not?

MR WOOD: It was five days, which would not take too long to add up if we took what is happening down at Tuggeranong. Yes, they are different, but the principle is the same. I think that Mr Humphries's starting point should have been, "I am protecting this local environment".

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .