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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 12 Hansard (13 November) . . Page.. 4180 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

and so on. The action taken in this Assembly tonight is going to ensure a sense of intergenerational responsibility that will be remembered for many years to come. Even when people do not know what led to it and do not know of the compromises that were made and the decisions that are finally being drawn to a conclusion here tonight, they will enjoy an environment that results from this process. That is something of which everybody who has been involved with it, and every member of this Assembly, can justifiably be proud.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (8.41), in reply: Mr Speaker, we come tonight to the end of a long road - a road which began in 1992 and which has spanned the work of several governments, many members of this Assembly, a large number of members of the ACT Public Service, and many people out in the community who were participants in consultative mechanisms about the development of this legislation. I must say that I was extremely grateful to hear, in the comments members have made around the chamber tonight, a recognition of the very large leap that we make by enacting this legislation, the very considerable benefit we bestow on the operation of this legislation, and the confidence with which public servants, members and servants of the Environmental Management Authority and others will have in its operation, because of the unanimity that we have brought to this exercise tonight.

We are going to debate later on this evening a Magistrates Court Bill in respect of which there will be some amendments and some debate. There have been some debates about rather significantly less important things on the agenda today, and on most days in this place, but here we have a piece of legislation which completely reinvents the whole structure of environmental protection in the ACT. It throws out five major Acts and creates a whole new edifice around environmental protection. It reverses, in a large sense, the onus or responsibility for managing the environment from government departments using a top down approach, telling people what they can and cannot do with respect to the environment - mainly what they cannot do - and instead places on the citizens of the ACT, every last one of them, a duty to act to protect the environment.

We have reached the point of taking forward, with virtually complete agreement on what needs to happen, all of the massive change which we are engineering with tonight's two Bills. In all the parliaments in this country and on all the issues that are debated, that would have to be a quite extraordinary state of affairs. The environment is one of the key issues, and it may be an issue in the coming campaign. If asked by people in this Territory, "What have you done in the last three years here? What do you have to show for all the money we have spent on you? We are paying your wages", merely pointing to this Bill, to which we have all contributed, would be, I think, a very worthwhile answer to those questions.

Mr Speaker, in developing the Bill we have drawn on the experiences of many other jurisdictions. We have tried to pick the eyes out of other legislative frameworks to make the best possible package. I think, with the legislation we pass tonight, we will have state-of-the-art environmental legislation. Indeed, we will probably lead the country, at least for the time being, in this area. I am aware that at least one other State, New South Wales, is also looking to review its environmental package. I would like to think that what we do tonight will be a model for New South Wales. Perhaps it will be.

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