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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (4 December) . . Page.. 4620 ..

MR MOORE: Thank you, members. I ask that copies of my speech be circulated. I would like to make a statement to the Assembly about the work of the Standing Committee on Planning and Environment over the life of this Assembly. I make the statement as chair of the committee, although not on behalf of the committee. My colleagues have sighted the statement and have discussed it, but felt it was appropriate for me to make it in a personal capacity. I consider that a statement about the work of our committee is useful because of the many and complex issues we have dealt with.

We have met formally on 111 occasions. That is an average of three meetings a month. We have produced 42 reports and made 10 formal statements. This approximates to one presentation to the Assembly each three weeks. We have reported to the Assembly on a great variety of issues. Thirteen of our reports have dealt with variations to the Territory Plan. One report was on a draft plan of management for public land. In that report the committee expressed its disappointment that the Government was able to bring forward only one such plan of management in the life of this Assembly. There is a large backlog of management plans for the Territory's public lands yet to come before this Assembly.

One report and one statement dealt with the former Starlight Drive-In Theatre site in North Watson and this report, along with the committee's consideration of a nearby draft variation involving Yowani golf course, led to the establishment of a major inquiry into the administration of the ACT's leasehold system, the Stein inquiry. One report dealt with graffiti in the Territory. Two reports and one statement dealt with the Acton-Kingston land swap. Three reports were into the Government's draft capital works programs for each of the three years of the Assembly. These reports, building on the fine work of this committee's predecessor in the Second Assembly, led to substantial improvements in the way capital works are handled in the ACT. I think we can go further yet, particularly in developing better ways to involve our local community in the selection of capital works. I hope that our successor committee in the next Assembly will take up this challenge. One report and two statements dealt with the handling of contaminated sites. We went on to produce a further report on the ACT Auditor-General's examination of the handling of contaminated sites. It is unusual for a committee other than the Public Accounts Committee to consider reports of the Auditor-General, but I believe our committee did it thoroughly and quickly and came to reasonable conclusions.

Four reports dealt with the national conferences of parliamentary public works and environmental committees. These conferences are an increasingly important way for members to learn what is happening in other States, the Northern Territory and at the Commonwealth level. There are two important points to note on this matter. The first is the very great overlap between environment issues and public works issues. It is quite instructive to realise the number and variety of environment-type issues that arise in the normal course of considering capital works. The second important point to note about these conferences is that the ACT, for the first time ever, hosted the 1996 national conferences of parliamentary public works and environment committees and we did so

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