Page 4714 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 13 December 2005
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MR GENTLEMAN: I move:
That the report be authorised for publication.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
MR GENTLEMAN: I move:
That the report be noted.
I table in the Assembly today the annual report of the Standing Committee on Planning and Environment for the calendar years 2004 and 2005 and the financial year 2004-05. The annual and financial reports for 2004-05 were presented to the Legislative Assembly on 18 October 2005 and referred to the standing committees for inquiry and report. The Standing Committee on Planning and Environment had the following reports referred to it: the ACT Planning and Land Authority report, the ACT Land Development Agency report, the ACTION Authority report, the Department of Urban Services report, the Commissioner for the Environment report, and the Canberra Public Cemeteries Trust report.
Annual reports hearings were held on 7, 9 and 10 November 2005. I would like to thank the ministers and government officials for the generous amount of time allocated to the committee for the hearings. Each annual report scrutinised by the committee seems to comply well with the Chief Minister’s annual report directions. Whilst I note Mr Seselja is absent from the chamber this morning, I would like to take this opportunity to thank him for working with the committee and discussing the draft report for the annual and financial hearings. It was of great comfort to the committee to be working as a team for what felt like the first time in about 12 months.
Turning to the first recommendation, the committee as a whole recommends that the ACT government increase the level of funding for the Office of the Commissioner for the Environment in the 2006-07 budget, to enable the commissioner to properly discharge her functions in relation to the ACT environment. The committee also recommends that the public sector management group in the Chief Minister’s Department and Treasury review the funding and legal basis of the Commissioner for the Environment’s role in relation to regional environmental reporting.
Mr Seselja worked very hard on his comments for this report. Over the last few meetings, held to discuss the report, he suggested several changes to the recommendations. In a spirit of bipartisanship, the committee accepted his suggestions. As you can see, the committee as a whole can work together when all of its members are prepared to get in and do the work.
During the hearings with the Land Development Agency Mr Seselja raised concerns over how land transferred from the ACT Planning and Land Authority is treated in accounting terms in the LDA’s annual report. Even though these concerns were explained and answered in the hearings, we still took on board Mr Seselja’s comments and had the following recommendation added. It reads:
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