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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2320 ..

MS McRAE (continuing):

encountered by people seeking to develop and redevelop leases when they dealt with the bureaucracy. The Mant/Collins team dealt with the question of the Executive's role in planning. The Red Tape Task Force highlighted the unnecessary complications facing people lodging applications for developments. The challenge for the Stein board of inquiry was to review the administrative structures and decisions to assess whether they had worked well for the ACT.

The first term of reference for the Stein board of inquiry related specifically to administration. The board was highly critical of management and managers alike. Recommendations 6, 7, 8, 15, 23 and 24 ended up taking a back to basics approach which included a complete overhaul of planning and lease management. More than that, the board wanted all positions spilt and three new statutory authorities formed - a planning authority, a land management authority and a statutory corporation. To further keep the process of land management as pure as possible, Stein also wanted a developments rights register to be established. The Government disagreed with these recommendations. However, one must not forget that, although they disagreed with the recommendations as Stein spelt them out, all senior positions were, in fact, spilt; a few people were moved; and there has been quite a level of shake-up in the areas of land and lease administration, I think, very much reflecting the sorts of concerns that Stein raised. One must not forget that when one talks about whether we should or should not have separate authorities. The Government has acted. The Government has also planned the careful implementation of all the important recommendations of the other reviews in parallel with that.

All of the things that were raised by the Red Tape review, by the process review and by the PDI are reflected in the Government's response. I think that, again, must not be forgotten. It was never very clear what could be achieved by throwing out the entire work force of the land and management areas of the bureaucracy of the ACT. Worse than that, Stein advocated putting in consultants, recommendations 23 and 24, to manage until all the changes were in place. I think this notion was not only expensive but probably repugnant both to the Assembly and the Government, given that not every officer was lined up and found wanting. They were all tarred with the same brush, on limited evidence, on evidence that was not tested. I think it would be a very sad day when the entire work force, from beginning to end, was thrown out on the basis of that recommendation; particularly since, so soon after those recommendations, the Government did, in fact, get rid of an awful lot of them, changed things around, opened up positions and shook things up. Whilst the Government did not initially say, "Yes; you are guilty", it certainly said, "Well, we are not going to accept things as they were any more". I think it is very important to remember that those actions were actually taken and some pretty severe shaking up of the bureaucracy was done.

In my opinion, Stein did not provide a place for the Executive or the Assembly in the management structures that he advocated. I thought that was a failing in the processes that Stein talked about. His notion of re-creating an NCDC-type of commission, to us, was not an attractive option. In his tabling speech to the Government's response to Stein, Mr Humphries foreshadowed the formation of an advisory body to the Government on planning. He is clearly in sympathy with a better process for good advice being available to the Government and therefore, I think, has rightly not accepted the idea that the Government can shed itself of its responsibility.

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