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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 04 Hansard (Thursday, 1 April 2004) . . Page.. 1610 ..

breaches the Act. This is based on similar provisions in the Environment Protection Act 1997. A person would only be able to put a case for such an order if they can persuade the Court that the Conservator is not taking adequate action and that it is appropriate that they put the matter before the Court. This means that only legitimate cases will be brought before the Court.

The Bill will amend the Environment Protection Act 1997 to add a requirement for all agencies and entities to report, in their annual reports, on their compliance with environmental laws and standards.

In addition to the initiatives in this Bill, my Government is also acting to deal with concerns about government compliance with environmental laws raised by the TransGrid incident. As members will recall, one of the barriers to effective prosecution of TransGrid was the fact that they are part of the NSW Government and beyond reach of prosecution by the Territory. My Government proposes to develop a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with NSW designed to prevent future incidents like the TransGrid matter and to deal with one should one arise in future. A similar approach will be taken within the ACT Government to ensure there is an adequate response to breaches of environmental laws by ACT Government entities.

The people of the ACT should be proud of the extent and quality of its nature conservation estate. The Bill reflects the Government’s commitment to protect that estate from threats such as clearing of vegetation.

I commend this Bill to the Assembly.

Attachment 3

Document incorporated by the Minister for Urban Services

The purpose of this Bill is to amend the current Charitable Collections Act 2003 by clarifying the bank account requirements for funds collected.

This Bill is consistent with the objectives of the Charitable Collections Act 2003.

In this Bill section 45 of the Charitable Collections Act 2003 is amended.

Section 45(2) of the Act states that a licensed collector must pay the money received from collections into a trust bank account that is used exclusively for money received for the purpose of the collection or collections.

Banks sometimes require a trust deed to be signed to establish a trust bank account. However, it is the Government’s view that licensed collecting entities should not need to sign a trust deed, and need only to comply with the three criteria specified in section 45(6) of the Act. These criteria are: proceeds of collections need to be deposited with an authorised deposit-taking institution, that is a bank; have a name that indicates the account contains the proceeds of a collection; and the account needs to be operated by the signatures of at least 2 people. This change is consistent with requirements in the Charitable Fundraising Act 1991 of New South Wales and the Fundraising Appeals Act 1998 of Victoria, because these two Acts refer to an ‘account’, and not to a ‘trust account’.

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