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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 03 Hansard (Thursday, 11 March 2004) . . Page.. 1122 ..

of the annual reports act. Regulations in this bill specify the areas that must be specifically reported to the minister and the Assembly.

MS DUNDAS (5.55): We need to be clear about what we mean when we talk about the independence of public servants. For years the Democrats have worked to maintain the independence of the public service by trying to ensure that government decisions are made fairly, with regard to factual professional advice and separated from the political interference of the government of the day.

The whole idea of creating the ACT Planning and Land Authority was to have a degree of independence from the minister and reduce the effects of political intrusion. With these amendments Mrs Dunne seems to have come up with a different sort of independence, in essence saying that two different parts of ACTPLA should be independent from each other. The solution she puts forward seems to separate one part, building regulations, from the rest of ACTPLA and put it back under ministerial control. During the in-principle stage of the debate on a land and planning act, Mrs Dunne attempted to remove building control from the duties of the Planning and Land Authority. We did not agree with Mrs Dunne then; we do not agree with Mrs Dunne now.

There are times when different parts of the public service need to be separate from each other. The Auditor-General obviously needs to be separate from Treasury and, as has recently been amply demonstrated, the Community Advocate needs to be separate from Family Services and the DPP needs to be separate from the police. However, I have not yet been convinced that there is a conflict between the roles of the building registrar and that of ACTPLA.

Good planning and good building are not in conflict. As Mrs Dunne said in her own speech to these amendments, good planning and good building cover good architecture, sustainability and a whole array of things. The discussion on sustainability, when we were debating the Building Bill, demonstrated quite clearly links between planning and building.

The point I am trying to make is that Mrs Dunne’s amendments actually make the building regulator less independent in terms of political interference, and that would defeat the purpose of creating ACTPLA in the first place. Mrs Dunne’s approach would see the building regulator less independent by subjecting them to greater influence from ministers, and I do not think they would get that kind of pressure as part of the ACTPLA structure. We will not be supporting Mrs Dunne’s amendments.

MRS DUNNE (5.56): I thank members for their comments. I would like to make the point that this is not my personal view. It is a view of the Liberal opposition; it is a view that the Liberal opposition has held for some time. In doing so, I recognise that there is not support in this place at this time for this public policy move, but I would like to place on the record the commitment of the Liberal opposition after the election to review this legislation and to establish an independent building registrar.

Amendments negatived.

Clause 101 agreed to.

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