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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 14 Hansard (9 December) . . Page.. 4770 ..

MS HORODNY (continuing):

I am also aware that the Land Act already confers some powers on the Supreme Court in section 261, but these are very limited and inadequate powers. Section 261 applies only where the Minister or another person wants to restrain a person from breaching an order made by the Minister. However, there is a whole range of areas in the Act where there is currently no recourse to the Supreme Court. For example, a person cannot use the Supreme Court to get some remedy if the Minister has refused to take out an order. The recent case of the Brown Street building highlighted that the community has no ability to question the actions of PALM in using the minor amendment provision in the Land Act to make changes to development applications. There is also the situation where the community has no power under the Land Act to challenge the Minister's decisions over the adequacy of environmental assessments of particular development proposals.

I, therefore, still believe that this Bill has merit and is needed to improve accountability in the ACT's planning system. I am very surprised, again, that the Labor Party has not supported this Bill.

Ms McRae: Insulting us does not help, Ms Horodny.

MS HORODNY: I am not insulting anyone, Ms McRae. I am simply pointing out the inconsistency here. To quote again from Mr Mossop's letter, he said:

... the liberalised standing provision -

in the AD(JR) Act -

was inserted when the Labor Party was in government in 1991. The then Attorney-General, Mr Connolly, when introducing the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) (Amendment) Bill said:

"This Bill gives effect to concerns that there should be wide standing to seek review of administrative matters in respect of planning and land use matters".

Since its introduction there has been no evidence that the section has been abused. Indeed I do not think there has been one application made under the provision, let alone a number that could be a cause for concern. Therefore the change appears to be without any empirical policy justification.

... the Labor Party in other jurisdictions has been instrumental in liberalising the standing requirements in environmental legislation ... in New South Wales, the ALP was instrumental in introducing open standing and civil enforcement provision into every significant piece of environmental legislation ... Even when in opposition the ALP -

in New South Wales -

fought hard to make sure that the broadest standing provisions were introduced.

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