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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 12 Hansard (12 November) . . Page.. 3984 ..
Bill, by leave, taken as a whole
MS TUCKER (10.59): I ask for leave to move together the five amendments circulated in my name.
Leave granted.
MS TUCKER: I move:
Page 2, line 2, clause 4, proposed new subsection 12(2), omit all the words after "appropriate,", substitute "take into account environmental issues relative to the operations being reviewed or examined, having regard to the principles of ecologically sustainable development".
Page 2, line 4, clause 4, proposed new subsection 12(3), omit the subsection.
Page 2, line 11, clause 4, proposed new subsection 12(4), omit "For the purposes of paragraph 3(b), ecologically sustainable development is to be taken to require", substitute "In this section, `ecologically sustainable development' means".
Page 2, line 13, clause 4, proposed new subsection 12(4), omit "and to be".
Page 2, line 25, clause 4, proposed new subsection 12(5), omit the subsection.
Mr Speaker, as members are aware - and other members have referred to this in their speeches - the original purpose of our legislation was to enable the Auditor-General to take into account social and environmental factors when conducting performance audits of government operations. The amendments I am moving are to make the focus of this legislation on environmental issues. As Mrs Carnell has mentioned, we have worked with the Auditor-General to make this a possible move into widening the scope of the performance audits. We have pulled back from the social aspects of activities being audited. That is not because we do not think social factors should be taken into account in audits of government operations. Quite the contrary; we have been calling for improved social indicators for nearly three years. Tomorrow I will be proposing a matter of public importance on the need for a social plan. That will definitely be related to the way we measure how we are operating on the social level. I am moving these amendments because we appreciate that the Auditor-General's Office is limited to the extent to which appropriate information such as objectives, indicators and benchmarks is available. This is lacking in the ACT at the moment, so at this point we are focusing just on environmental issues.
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