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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 3 Hansard (9 April) . . Page.. 735 ..

(Quorum formed)

MR SPEAKER (Mr Cornwell) took the chair and asked members to stand in silence and pray or reflect on their responsibilities to the people of the Australian Capital Territory.

MS HORODNY (10.32): Mr Speaker, I present the Land (Planning and Environment) (Amendment) Bill 1997, together with its explanatory memorandum.

Title read by Clerk.

MS HORODNY: I move:

That this Bill be agreed to in principle.

To explain the purpose of this Bill, I need to go back to the Stein report into the administration of the ACT leasehold system. Recommendation No. 95 of the Stein report stated:

`any person' should be entitled to approach the AAT or Supreme Court to civilly enforce breaches of the Land Act without being required to establish common law standing.

This recommendation came about because Stein was concerned that it was unclear from the Land Act whether any person, apart from the Minister, could apply to the Supreme Court to enforce an order or to require compliance with the terms of a development approval. Stein believed that the insertion of an open standing provision in the Land Act would remove any doubt as to the ability of a member of the public to seek to enforce breaches of the ACT planning and leasehold laws. Such a provision would enable a person, irrespective of their personal interests in the matter, to approach the Supreme Court to remedy or restrain a breach of the Act.

The Government, in its response to the Stein report, said that it agreed with this recommendation in part, but that the ability for people to question specific planning decisions in the Supreme Court was already available under the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act, so there was no need to amend the Land Act. This sounded fine;

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