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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (26 June) . . Page.. 2159 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

It is inconsistent because, when you go to the movies, on most nights parents pay the full adult rate and children get a concession. If you go to a public pool in the ACT, parents pay adult rates and they get a concession for their children. At Tidbinbilla you can get a concession if you are unemployed. If you drive up in a car and there is one unemployed person in the car, you can get a concession. If you drive up and there is a pensioner in the car, you get a concession for the whole vehicle. If you drive up in a car and you have two kids and two adults on board, you do not get the concession. That is simply inconsistent, and it is another reason why this fee should be opposed. I urge the Greens and the Independents to keep those points in mind when making their decision on the debate today.

Maintaining Tidbinbilla as an asset for all Canberrans free of charge is the purpose of this motion today. Accessing our natural environment should not be a matter of whether or not you should pay for it. It should be a matter of being able to go and experience it in a way which is not simply seen as user pays. I commend the motion to the Assembly.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (10.52): Mr Speaker, we have heard Mr Corbell tell this Assembly in sonorous tones that the Australian Labor Party opposes the charging of entry fees at the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve.

Mr Berry: It has always done so.

MR HUMPHRIES: The Labor Party believes that it should not be a matter of paying for access to natural values and natural reserves; that one should be able to experience these for free. Mr Berry interjects that that has always been the case - that there has always been a view on the Labor Party's part that there should be no access by fee to nature reserves in the ACT. I want to draw members' attention to a Bill that was introduced into this place in the latter part of 1994. It was entitled the Nature Conservation (Amendment) Bill (No. 2) 1994. The mover of that Bill was Mr Bill Wood, who today sits beside Mr Corbell.

Mr Kaine: They have not spoken to each other lately, obviously.

MR HUMPHRIES: Apparently not. If he had spoken to Mr Wood, perhaps he would have had his attention drawn to a provision in this Bill. This Bill was passed, I think unamended, by the Assembly in 1994. The Bill, by clause 17, inserted a new section 53A in the Nature Conservation Act 1980 which reads as follows:

(1) The determined fee may be charged for entry into a reserved area.

Mr Berry: Who put that in?

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Wood did.

Mr Berry: No, the Assembly, you said. You said it was a 1980 Act.

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