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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 4 Hansard (29 March) . . Page.. 1209 ..

The Assembly voted-

	Ayes 7  		Noes 6

 Mr Berry  	Ms Tucker  	Mrs Burke  Mr Stefaniak
 Mr Corbell  	Mr Wood  	Mr Cornwell
 Mr Kaine    			Mr Hird
 Mr Quinlan    			Mr Moore
 Mr Stanhope    		Mr Smyth

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 6, as amended, agreed to.

Clauses 7 to 13, by leave, taken together and agreed to.

Clause 14.

MS TUCKER (5.32): I move the amendment standing in my name [see schedule 2 at page 1219]. My amendment is to subclause 14 (2) which is about what the conservator does if a person fails to provide further information that is requested by the conservator regarding an application to damage the tree. At present the conservator may refuse to consider the application further and I think this is too weak. I would think that, as a standard administrative practice, if a person does not provide information that is requested or required to determine whether an application should be approved or not, then the application should be automatically refused.

If someone wants an activity approved then the onus should be on them to provide sufficient information to justify the activity. This is the approach adopted in the land act for development applications-for example, in section 234 of this act-which is actually a similar issue. While the conservator may be able to find out the requested information by other means, I do not think that he or his staff should have to do the running around to find this information. If a person wants their application approved they should have to provide all that information.

MR CORBELL (5.33): Mr Speaker, the Labor Party will not be supporting Ms Tucker's amendment. I think it is important to leave some discretion with the conservator in deciding whether or not an application can be approved even if additional information requested has not been provided. There may very well be circumstances whereby through no fault of the applicant the information has not been provided, and discretion should be available to the conservator to make the judgment in those cases.

Amendment negatived.

Clause 14 agreed to.

Remainder of bill, by leave, taken as a whole and agreed to.

Bill, as amended, agreed to.

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