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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 3 Hansard (28 March) . . Page.. 825 ..

MR MOORE (4.03): Mr Speaker, I had intended to adjourn the debate on this issue at this stage so that we could have a more thoughtful response.

MR SPEAKER: Mr Moore, I am reminded by the Clerk that you have already spoken.

MR MOORE: I seek leave to speak again.

Leave granted.

MR MOORE: Thank you, members, for granting me leave. The Government's response to this report is, to say the least, extremely disappointing. Mr Speaker, we have the Minister explaining that he has looked not just at Stein but also at Mant/Collins and a series of other reports and has come up, therefore, with this response and we should all be pleased with it. He did say, as he finished his speech, that the debate will start now and that he welcomes it. Indeed, it is appropriate for the debate to start now, but it should be carried out in an appropriate way.

Mr Speaker, the Planning and Environment Committee has already indicated to this Assembly that it has taken on an inquiry to look at the implementation of the Stein report. While that committee is looking at the implementation of this report, it is hardly appropriate for the Minister to move away from what was said in the Stein report and then begin advertising, as he indicated he would, on Saturday. It is entirely inappropriate. If he had said, "We are going to adopt this in toto and each one of the responses is agreed", I would say that we have no argument with that. But, in fact, there is a whole series of issues that need to be considered in very careful detail. We would like to consider in the Planning and Environment Committee why it is that they have rejected a statutory Territory planning authority and why it is that the Government has rejected the establishment, particularly, of a land management authority. That is absolutely fundamental to what Justice Stein said is necessary to protect the leasehold system and the land within the ACT.

It may well be that Mr Humphries or his delegates, whom I am sure he will make available to appear before the committee, have such overwhelming arguments that we are convinced that he is right, that the majority of members of the Assembly are convinced that that is the appropriate way to go; but, if he has done all his advertising to establish something else and has appointed people for these other proposals that he has that, as I read it, are largely based on Mant/Collins, then the perspective is very different. That is why, Mr Speaker, I have circulated a motion that I will seek leave to move in a short while. That motion, which I am foreshadowing, says that the Government should take no action to implement its response to the Stein report until the Planning and Environment Committee has reported on its inquiry into the implementation of the Stein report. I think that this is an entirely appropriate way to go, Mr Speaker, when we are talking about what Mr Humphries asked for - a multiparty, multimember approach to such a fundamentally important issue.

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