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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Thursday, 13 May 2004) . . Page.. 1849 ..

MS TUCKER (5.49): This is a strange debate in that the mover of the disallowance motion will clearly not be supporting his own motion. That is because his motion goes against his party’s position. This is another attempt to circumvent scrutiny of the decisions that have allowed work on the Gungahlin Drive extension to commence. In itself that is enough of a basis to reject these regulations.

These regulations include changes that have far-reaching consequences. It is inconvenient for the government that democracy takes time. It seems to have been a mistake for the government to have written contracts that included a large penalty if there were delays. It should have been obvious that this was a controversial piece of work, bulldozing through the nature reserve as it does and committing Gungahlin residents to a future of more transport problems as this expensive road shifts the congestion points to different points on the road network. I am also aware that Save the Ridge alerted the government and the tendering contractors to the fact that opposition to the construction work could be expected. In the briefing from the government, my office was told that the government extensively conducted risk analysis for the contract. Clearly this risk was missed.

There seems to be a bit of a sense from the Minister for Planning that this scrutiny is somehow vexatious and that, for citizens to raise concerns and point out where there were flaws in the decision-making, mandated under the laws that protect our nature reserves, is somehow unjust and unreasonable. This seems to me to be taking far too lightly the system of checks and balances in a democracy. We have appeal rights to the AAT so that there is an opportunity to check on the adequacy of a decision made by the administration and we have appeal rights to the ADJR so that the lawfulness of a decision can be tested. These are not to be thrown away because there is an inconvenient decision.

There are echoes of this in what I hear from parts of the community sector—that is, they have to weigh carefully any public criticism of the government for fear of losing their funding or not getting desperately needed new funding. I have heard that of the previous government and, despite early assurances that the government welcomed the free and independent comment of the community sector, I am sadly hearing it now about this government.

I am pleased to note that the changes to the regulations will not apply to development applications made before the commencement of these amendments. I had thought that it would be a fairly small matter for the government, having changed the rules, to withdraw its application made under the old rules and reapply under the new regulations which have been in force since Friday, 30 April. However, the view expressed in yesterday’s briefing was that it would be difficult under the new regulations to make a new application since ACTPLA would be obliged to refer an application for works on designated areas to the NCA for approval. I have to admit that I do not quite understand the problem there. The government will need to apply to the court to have the injunction lifted in any case.

The first substantive change is to add to the list of absolute exemptions from the act, part 6, in regulation 40. Exemption from part 6 represents exemption from any requirement to seek development approval. The new regulation before us today

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