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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 10 Hansard (28 August) . . Page.. 3324 ..
Reject the recommendations of the Standing Committee on Planning and Urban Services and reject Variation 138 for Gungahlin Drive Extension when it is voted on by the Assembly.
The Clerk having announced that the terms of the petitions would be recorded in Hansard and a copy referred to the appropriate minister, the petitions were received.
Planning and Urban Services-Standing Committee
Report No 81
MR HIRD (10.34): Mr Speaker, I present the following report:
Planning and Urban Services-Standing Committee-Report No 81-A Land Administration Information System for the ACT, together with a copy of the extracts of the minutes of proceedings.
I move:
That the report be noted.
Mr Speaker, I am pleased to table this unanimous report by my committee. The report deals with a very important subject, namely, the nature of a comprehensive, useable, publicly accessible and central land administration information system across the whole of government.
An up-to-date land information system will benefit every person within the territory. It will help the politicians to know the exact details of all land holdings within the ACT. It will help government officials maintain up-to-the-minute records of changes to land in the territory. And, most important of all, it will help the public find the information that they want about land, at a time that suits them and in a format that they can determine.
Mr Speaker, the committee commenced this inquiry because we were concerned that the ACT was lagging behind what other states and territories were doing. In Hobart in 1998 we saw the operations of the Tasmanian land information system, known as the LIST system, and we were very impressed. LIST provides subscribers with Internet access to land title information, property and valuation information, sales information, a registry of deeds, and maps of individual properties. Can the ACT public obtain this range of information electronically? Sadly, Mr Speaker, the answer is no, at least not yet.
Our report describes the steps being taken in the ACT to update our land information system. But we are lagging well behind Tasmania, the Northern Territory, and other states, particularly Queensland and Western Australia. This was confirmed by the evidence we were given at our hearings by the ACT Law Society.
We need to concentrate our resources upon unbundling the complexity of the existing arrangements for handling land information within the territory. In doing so, we should have regard to four key principles. The first is that the public deserve to obtain the maximum amount of information possible. Secondly, we may need to introduce our own privacy legislation in order to facilitate the smooth transfer of land information among government agencies. Thirdly, we should insist upon all land information being available electronically, and without having to visit multiple sites. Fourthly, the public should be
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