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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 09 Hansard (Wednesday, 18 August 2004) . . Page.. 3867 ..

It was interesting to look at the findings of the Productivity Commission. It found, amongst other things, that:

In most State and Territory jurisdictions, little formal consideration has been given to policy approaches other than regulation for delivering environmental goals.

Regulation impact assessments or equivalent assessments in the absence of the formal RIS requirements do not appear to have been undertaken in relation to these sorts of regulatory schemes.

In most jurisdictions there has been limited assessment of the likely economic and social costs of native vegetation and biodiversity regulatory regimes, while the benefits of the regime appear to be taken as self-evident.

The Productivity Commission made a very long series of recommendations, but the principal recommendation—the one that causes me to pull up and for the Liberal opposition to decide that we cannot support this legislation yet—is:

Before introducing new or amending existing native vegetation and biodiversity policy a comprehensive regulatory impact statement or its equivalent should be prepared that includes an assessment of the problem being targeted, expected costs and benefits of the proposed policy and an assessment of alternative instruments. This assessment should be made public.

I think that is a very sound approach—not just for this but for just about anything that we do in government. A colleague used to have a sign over his desk—I do not think he still has it—to the effect that, every time this Assembly sat, the rights of the people of the ACT were being infringed in some way or other. It is something we have to be very careful about. We spend our time in this place regulating what people can do out there. When we do that it has to be done with a great deal of care. The Democrats, Ms Dundas and her staff, have done a fantastic job of putting this together but there is just not the capacity—and this is not criticism of Ms Dundas; it is a statement of fact—in an opposition member’s or a cross-bench member’s office to do the sort of regulatory impact statement that is required before the introduction of a piece of legislation like this.

This is very far-reaching legislation. I would like to see the next Assembly revisit this matter very early. I make the commitment that, if I am the Minister for Environment, we will revisit this very early and we will introduce a regime that has the regulatory impact statement underpinning it. I observed yesterday the snide comments of the Chief Minister to Ms Dundas. He said, “You don’t do anything. Why don’t you do it? I have got plenty of things to take up my time, but you, Ms Dundas, have got nothing to take up your time. You should do these things.”

Those are snide comments—comments that are not, in fact, true. This is groundbreaking work for the ACT. It has been done not by the government but by the crossbenchers. It is great work, but we do not have the resources to do it to the extent that it should be done so that we can be confident that it really works in practice. That is a function of the sheer lack of resources of opposition and cross-bench members. The Chief Minister can make comments about how much work the opposition and the crossbenchers do not do, but, if we look at the record of the amount of legislation put forward here—successfully or

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