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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 12 Hansard (14 November) . . Page.. 3625 ..

MRS DUNNE (continuing):

it was clear that a number of witnesses had not had the opportunity to consider the supplementary legislation and other information.

Thus the committee had to seek supplementary submissions from those organisations as part of its legislative review. It became clear on 8 October that until the day before at least the consequential amendments to the Planning and Land Bill were not on the ACT government legislation database, so the people who were seeking to have access to it to form their views had not been able to do so before they came to the public hearing. The introduction continues:

As a result, the committee's consideration of the legislation has been hurried. If the committee had more time available, it may have been able to complete a more thorough investigation and have been better informed, as well as being able to propose more alternatives where necessary.

The effort of community, business and professional groups to respond to the committee's request for public input is greatly appreciated. However the lack of access to documents has also meant that submissions to the committee may have been hurriedly prepared, and there is the distinct possibility that some problems may have been overlooked.

This is the problem. (Extension of time granted.) There has been a piecemeal approach and this piecemeal approach bespeaks an unseemly haste to get something passed, anything passed. As I said before, this is not the way good legislators make legislation.

There are important issues about process here, and here I challenge the minister. He talks consultation, but can he walk consultation? I would like him to demonstrate that he is not like Pontius Pilate; he doesn't say, "Quod scripsi scripsi,"and leave it at that. There is more to being a minister than tabling legislation. I challenge the minister to extend the courtesy that was extended to him as a member of the Planning and Environment Committee, say, at the time of passing the environment protection legislation and conduct a round table conference with interested parties, with members of the Assembly who have concerns and members of stakeholder organisations which have concerns, and negotiate his way through this legislation.

It is obvious that this minister will get his legislation through. The challenge will be whether the government will ride roughshod over the Canberra community, whether there will be an unseemly barney on the floor of this Assembly, with amendments being dashed off on the backs of envelopes, which is what happened when the land act was implemented, or whether it will be orderly and civilised.

I think that the process conducted by this committee so far has been orderly and civilised and I have to commend the members of the committee because we came to this inquiry with different views about what the outcome should be, but on every occasion we put our ideology out, we parked it at the door, and we had constructive discussions about the way through. I must compliment the members of the committee on the convivial and professional way in which they conducted themselves. I have to say this because of the slurs that were made in this place by the minister the other day: the members of the committee work hard and they take their role very seriously.

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