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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 6 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 1843 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (3.57), in reply: Mr Speaker, I want to thank members for their strong support for the legislation which has been brought forward. It was the product of some discussion and consultation, and I am pleased that we have been able to reach agreement on this Bill and that we can proceed now to clarify the position for the Commissioner for the Environment. I am glad that this is happening at this stage and that we are settling this matter, because technically the commissioner has been in breach of his obligations for something close to a year now in not having produced a 1996 State of the Environment Report. I have assured him that I have agreement from members of the Assembly to support this change in arrangements, and he has rather nervously noted my comments but not been sure what would happen when this reached the floor of the Assembly. I will be very pleased to report to him on the next occasion I meet with him - and I meet with him about every six weeks or so - that the Assembly has given strong support for these changes.

The structure of the Bill is quite deliberate in referring to the delivery of a report by the commissioner by 31 March in each pre-election year. That is designed, obviously, to allow a government to respond to the report within six months. The reference to a pre-election year, of course, is very deliberate, in that it provides for a very comprehensive environment report card to be laid before the people of the ACT prior to governments going to the polls, so that the community can see what progress is being made on the environment.

Perhaps in the future the environment will not be such a significant issue as it is in the general scheme of people's priorities today. Whether that is or is not the case, I think it is important for us now to be able to state what progress has been made on key environmental issues in a context where voters can take that into account when making decisions prior to elections. In saying that, I suppose I need to indicate that, if legislation presently before the house creating four-year terms of the Assembly is ultimately passed, there would be, in theory at least, some question of whether we should change those arrangements. Whether a report every four years would be appropriate is a moot point. Perhaps we would not wish to have reports of that infrequency. I think we would all agree - in fact, we have agreed by our comments so far - that a report every year is too frequent and undermines the impact which such reports should have on the behaviour of governments, government agencies and other parties working in the field of the environment, in terms of performance and output. We hope that, if and when we deal with the question of four-year terms, the Assembly will be able to deal with that issue of when appropriate reports ought to be produced.

I want to make one final comment about the suggestion that there is not an independent environment protection agency - a comment made by Ms Horodny. I would simply disagree with her assertion. We have a Pollution Control Authority and other agencies of government which have statutory obligations independent of the Government which are protected by legislation and which people fulfilling those roles have an obligation to the Government and to the community to fulfil. I think what Ms Horodny would probably like is an office of people who have no direct role to play in the hierarchy of government,

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