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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (2 July) . . Page.. 2166 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

There is also the problem of how the toxic solid waste collected from the proposed new pollution control equipment will be disposed of. The recommendation in the committee's report was welcomed, but it did not address the full extent of the issue. While in future the dioxin emissions will be reduced with the new pollution control equipment, we have no idea what health impacts there have been on ACT residents from the dioxin emissions that have occurred up to now. I foreshadow that I will be moving a motion about the incinerator in the next sitting period. I will be asking the Government to immediately include the European standard and I will be raising a number of other issues.

On EPIC, I am disappointed that the Government is not taking seriously enough the concerns of Watson residents who are subject to regular bouts of excessive noise from events at EPIC. I do not think it is good enough just to say the environmental authorisation for EPIC deals with noise. I would like the Government to be actively seeking to reduce noise levels from events at EPIC through limiting the number of noisy events there in the future and by cracking down on excessive noise at existing events.

On CTEC, I have to give my interpretation of the committee's recommendation regarding the promotion by CTEC of ecologically sustainable development within the tourism industry. As the person who put up the amendment to include this requirement in CTEC's statutory functions when the legislation for CTEC was debated in this Assembly, I obviously would not support any deletion of this function from the legislation. The wording of the recommendation suggests that the Government has a choice of either keeping or deleting this requirement. I think this was meant to be more a rhetorical expression than a direction to government. I want to make it clear on the record that that was the intention. I am glad that the Government accepts that the promotion of ESD in ACT tourism is important, but I still believe that CTEC needs to do more to fulfil its statutory function in this area and I will be expecting improvements from them over the next year. Thank you.

MR STANHOPE (Leader of the Opposition) (3.28): Mr Speaker, I would like to take the opportunity to make some broad comments on aspects of the Estimates Committee report and the Government's response to that report. I agree with comments made previously that it was a very good and comprehensive report. There are some particular aspects of it that I would speak to.

Recommendation 7 went to the need for the Chief Minister's Department to develop appropriate benchmarks and recommended that all benchmarking data for departments be reviewed by the Auditor-General. I am pleased to see that the Government has accepted the desirability of some benchmarking but unfortunately the Government did not accept that part of the recommendation that went to the involvement of the Auditor-General.

I believe that that is a good recommendation and that that would be a very good role for the Auditor-General. I think by the Government's own admission it is sometimes difficult to find meaningful comparative information from other jurisdictions. As a result, an analysis by the Auditor-General may assist in determining the relevance and

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