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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 3 Hansard (8 April) . . Page.. 653 ..

MS HORODNY (continuing):

On the issue of pest plant control, I note that the draft ACT weeds strategy released in 1996 contained a number of recommendations to improve existing legislation relevant to weed control. An example is the changes to the Litter Act to cover the dumping of garden waste and giving increased power to the Conservator to manage the spread of weeds. However, these recommendations were not included in the final strategy released in September 1996. We believe that many of these recommendations have merit and should have been included in the Bill before the Assembly.

Given our reservations with this Bill, I will be proposing a range of amendments which I would like to describe in more detail when we get to that stage of the Bill. However, I would like to make a general point about the relevance of these amendments. Mr Speaker, I am having trouble hearing myself.

MR SPEAKER: Order! Ms Horodny has the floor. If you wish to debate matters, please use the lobbies.

MS HORODNY: Thank you, Mr Speaker. When we discussed with the Urban Services officials the amendments that we are proposing, they questioned why we were making them. They thought that some of them were unnecessary and some of them were outside the scope of this Bill. I disagree with this. I think the Minister did say in his presentation speech that the objective of this legislation is to assist the strategic control of pest plants and animals in the ACT. My amendments are designed to contribute to that same objective by spelling out very clearly, in the relevant pieces of legislation, what are the rules which govern the control of pest plants and animals.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (11.01), in reply: Mr Speaker, I thank members who have contributed to this debate. As members have heard, this is about tidying up outdated legislation, in large part. The repeal of a number of old pieces of legislation - particularly, the Rabbit Destruction Act of 1919 and the Noxious Weeds Act of 1921 - is appropriate, given the dramatic changes that have occurred, both in the treatment and care of our environment and in the attitudes of Australians towards those issues, in the period since that legislation was enacted. The Rabbit Destruction Act, for example, deals with fencing requirements to exclude rabbits and cost-sharing arrangements for fencing. Much of that is no longer relevant, not merely because of the calicivirus, and I think, Mr Speaker, it is appropriate that we move onto a more contemporary management regime for these sorts of issues.

Ms Horodny has made the point that there seems to have been late consultation on the amendments in this Bill. I have to say, Mr Speaker, that the Government was surprised to find the degree of interest by Ms Horodny in these amendments to the Land (Planning and Environment) Act. These were essentially amendments of what I would consider a minor and technical nature to the Land (Planning and Environment) Act to achieve the repeal of outdated legislation, effectively the standardisation of orders and other processes under the contemporary regime we have under the Land Act, and the making of some of those processes subject to disallowance on the floor of the Assembly, which is not a device present in the earlier legislation. There was no change of policy inherent in that. There was no direction which it seemed to me would be controversial in any respect to any of the parties that might potentially have been interested in this process.

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