Page 1780 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 21 August 2007
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
At 6.00 pm, in accordance with standing order 34, the debate was interrupted. The adjournment of the Assembly having been put and negatived, the debate was resumed.
DR FOSKEY: For example, decisions about which organisations should gain concessional status in terms of leases should perhaps be made in conjunction with advice from DHCS, TAMS or CMD. Much of the decision making around environmental impact statements falls completely in the hands of ACTPLA, with occasional reference to the minister but with complete disregard for consultation with, for example, the Conservator of Flora and Fauna or any other body with environmental responsibility, knowledge or decision making ability that ordinarily one would presume would have a say in environmental impact assessments. I make the point that this is the role of a beefed-up commissioner for the environment as in the New Zealand model referred to earlier.
In my introduction I brought up issues I and my office had with the lack of time and opportunity to meaningfully interact with the minister, his staff and his department on this bill. In a way this is a sad reflection of how we see public opportunities will be for people who interact with developments after this legislation has been put in place. What we find throughout this legislation is a tightened timeframe to ensure that developments are not held up at any point unnecessarily. What this means in real terms to anyone who may be affected by any development is that any concerns must be voiced within 15 days of public notice being given. This is in the regs, not the bill, and that is why I am talking about it here.
This is woefully inadequate. Fifteen days might be enough time for a well-oiled department to run an application through the decision making wheel. However, as a public consultation period without notice, it is a joke. Unfortunately, it is not the only part of the public consultation process that fails us. The constant reference throughout the bill to community consultation taking the form of a public notice in a daily newspaper is a sign that the government wants to do the bare minimum here. It is not truly committed to getting public input.
How many residents of Canberra actually buy and read the Canberra Times public notices section every day? Not as many as the Canberra Times would like and perhaps not as many as the government would like. Perhaps it is as many as the government would like because that is what we are talking about here. If you find out about a development when it is too late, they will say, “But there was a notice about it in the paper.” That is just not good enough. This government has an excellent community engagement manual. It would be really great if some of the theory within that manual could be applied to this bill.
Another issue related to consultation is about tenant rights. In current legislation and also in this proposed legislation property owners and lessees are notified of a relevant development, but tenants are not. Being the last to find out, they will most likely have completely missed the short consultation period of 15 days. Tenants generally have no standing throughout this bill.
It would be really nice if this legislation could go through a process like a French election or, perhaps more relevant to here, a committee process. I understand that if
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .