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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 11 Hansard (26 September) . . Page.. 3367 ..

Districts Bill 2002

That this bill be agreed to in principle.

MRS DUNNE (6.11): Mr Speaker, the opposition will be supporting this bill because it is a straightforward and sensible application of new technology to an old problem of mapping. This bill allows for new technology to be used to describe boundaries within the ACT more accurately and to more flexibly adjust boundaries. It allows for more use of technology by the Registrar-General, for better control over street numbering and street allocation and for the Commissioner of Surveys to establish and maintain the digital cadastral database.

All of these innovations will improve the way that the boundaries of districts, divisions, sections and blocks are described in the ACT and will make life better for surveyors, the Registrar-General, planners, builders, property owners and emergency services. It is a shame, though, that in doing so we will be doing away with some of the quaint language of the previous Districts Act, which had a large schedule of rather poetic language that described the districts. Those poetic descriptions will now be replaced by numbers on a map. I think that we should note in passing that no longer will we be able to describe the Cotter River district as follows:

All that part of the Australian Capital Territory commencing at Coree Trigonometrical Station and bounded thence by a line northeasterly to the northwestern corner of Commonwealth land formerly Portions 12, 14 and 15, Parish of Tidbinbilla, County of Cowley, in the State of New South Wales; thence by the northern boundary of that Commonwealth land and its easterly prolongation easterly to the middle thread of Coree Creek ...

I love the reference to the middle thread and I will miss the passing of the middle thread of creeks, rivers and roads. Having said that, this is a sensible piece of legislation that brings the way we manage things up to date. That is why the government will have the support of the opposition in this bill.

MR CORBELL (Minister for Education, Youth and Family Affairs, Minister for Planning and Minister for Industrial Relations) (6.14), in reply: I thank members for their support of this important modernisation of the Districts Act.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Bill agreed to in principle.

Leave granted to dispense with the detail stage.

Bill agreed to.

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