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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Thursday, 13 May 2004) . . Page.. 1890 ..

appeal rights, as the land act does. In the land act there are a whole range of things that curtail people’s rights to appeal.

MR SPEAKER: Order! There is too much audible conversation going on.

MRS DUNNE: Under the land act, for instance, the minister can call in powers. That is clearly set out in legislation, and it has a precedent of very long standing. There are also a range of regulations that specify certain things that are exempt from third party appeals, like building a road—although some people have not quite grasped that yet. In the Nature Conservation Act there is no regime for exemptions, and to install this amendment in either form establishes, without any real discussion about the principle of that, a regime of exemptions. If we pass the blue amendment, it is a broad-brush exemption. If we pass the yellowy, buff one, it is a very specific and limited one. You might think, “What’s the problem with that?”

What it boils down to is this: “It’s a fine mess you got us into here, Ollie.” The government messed up. The government did not do its homework. The government did not take all the hints. The government did not think about how it would get things through; it just stood around and hoped that everything would be all right. What happened was that it was not all right. It did not plan for the worst-case scenario. When I said to government members, “Why don’t you come up with enabling legislation?” they said, “No, no, no. You can’t do that. End of civilisation as we know it.”

Here we are confronted with a bandaid, and it is an increasingly ludicrous bandaid because the government has now moved from being opposed to enabling legislation to foreshadowing that, presumably tomorrow, they will introduce their own. What will actually happen is that we are going to pass bad legislation to fill a two-week gap, or a four-week gap at most.

On the government’s own admission these amendments will become superfluous as soon as the enabling legislation is passed. It has been put to members here tonight that if we are so concerned about it, when we pass the enabling legislation—of whichever colour, because surely one of them will pass; or there will be a compromise between the two—we can at the same time pass an amendment to take out this amendment that the government proposes to make tonight.

I have never heard a more ludicrous proposal. This is bad law. It is bandaid law. As somebody said here tonight, “The open-heart surgery is coming next week or the next time we sit, or whenever.” So let’s not put a bandaid on the scar when we are going to pull it all apart, fix it and put it back.

If the government is so concerned about the timing, I and my colleagues are quite prepared to make time tomorrow to debate the Projects of Territorial Significance Bill, which was introduced here only today but has been circulated amongst members for two weeks in various forms. The final form was circulated to members last Thursday; it has been out there.

The government says, “You’re holding up the GDE.” The Liberal opposition is not prepared to hold up the GDE—

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