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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 11 Hansard (30 November) . . Page.. 3560 ..

commissioner prior to subsequent ACT elections, and we will be supporting this legislation.

MS TUCKER (5:06): This bill is about the timing of ACT state of the environment reports. When the Commissioner for the Environment Act was established, there was an obligation on the commissioner to produce annual state of the environment reports. This requirement was amended in 1997 so that reports would be produced only every three years. The release of the report was synchronised with a fixed election date, in that reports had to be completed by 31 March in each pre-election year. The government would then have time to release its response to the report and start to take action to address any identified problems before the election due the following February, when their efforts to protect the environment could be judged by voters. However, with the change to an October election date-for the moment anyway, until someone attempts to bring on an early election-state of the environment reporting has become out of synchronisation with the election date.

A further complication is that the ACT is now participating in the development of regional state of the environment reports, which for New South Wales local governments have a reporting date in November every four years, including this year. This obviously does not tie in with our electoral cycle. The government has therefore proposed to give the commissioner some discretion in the timing of the State of the Environment Report so that the completion of ACT and regional reports can be better aligned.

I can support this approach in principle, but I am not sure that the desire to coordinate these reports will be met in practice. Looking at the years in which ACT and regional reports would fall due, 2004 would be a real problem, as the regional report would fall due one month after an ACT election, which is quite unacceptable. What will happen in 2008 is anyone's guess. Perhaps by then the ACT will have four-year terms to match New South Wales, but our election day and year may still not be aligned with New South Wales local government elections.

The desire to combine ACT and regional reports may therefore turn out to be false economy. The growth of electronic collection and presentation of environmental data via the Internet may also make it much easier to produce separate ACT and regional reports than currently. I am prepared to give the commissioner the benefit of the doubt and support this bill in principle, but the Greens have a big problem with the possibility that, in the drive to align the New South Wales and ACT reports, ACT state of the environment reports will get completely out of synchronisation with the ACT electoral cycle.

If we totally align with the four-year cycle in New South Wales, there is even the possibility that no ACT report will be produced within a three-year ACT election cycle. The election cycle and the consequent election campaigns provide voters of the ACT with the appropriate opportunity to appraise the performance of the government, but this appraisal can occur effectively only if comprehensive information is available to the public on performance of the government.

ACT state of the environment reports provide such information in the environmental arena, and it is important that these reports come out within a reasonable period before an election. While wanting to give flexibility in setting reporting dates for the

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