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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 3 Hansard (8 March) . . Page.. 716 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

so on. The Government tell me that they do this anyway: They are good financial managers, their departments are good financial managers, and their departments are working to best practice, getting 100 per cent for their policy advice.

We know that the Government is proud of what it is doing in governing the ACT, but we do not hear the Government saying, "Because they do that, we are not going to put down more bureaucratic processes and say that you have to report on them". The Government is not saying that. The Government is saying that it matters that the ACT community can see through the annual reports that things are being done in the way that they should be done. Mr Smyth is actually saying that the environment is not important enough to report on, otherwise he would have said, "Yes, we recognise that this is important, that this is a good idea". The Federal Liberal Government has understood that it is a good idea. The whole issue of state of the environment reporting is something that has been embraced by this Government, but it is pulling back from this one, which is really hard to understand.

It is also of concern to me that one person in this place, Mr Rugendyke, said in response to my private meeting with him that he thought it was too general and subjective to report on this issue. When we first introduced state of the environment reporting people were not totally clear on how that would be done, but in introducing it they said, "This matters. We will develop it and it will become more sophisticated as we do it". I remind members that ESD, ecologically sustainable development, is not something that just happened yesterday. I hold in my hand from December 1992 the national strategy for ecologically sustainable development which was agreed to by all States and Territories and the Federal Government. It was recognised as a joint commitment to find ways to ensure that ecologically sustainable development occurs.

At 5.00 pm the debate was interrupted in accordance with standing order 34. The motion for the adjournment of the Assembly having been put and negatived, the debate was resumed.

MS TUCKER: The goal of ecologically sustainable development is:

The core objectives are:

The guiding principles are:

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