Page 2021 - Week 07 - Thursday, 23 August 2007
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consultation period” for a draft EIS to the clause. New clause 211A will remove the need for this clause.
Amendments agreed to.
Clause 214, as amended, agreed to.
Clauses 215 to 219, by leave, taken together and agreed to.
Clause 220.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (8.48): I will be opposing this clause. One justification that my office was given for the inclusion of this provision was that it was impractical for the minister to present every EIS to the Assembly. Again, this is a “trust me” clause. There is no guidance on which EISs the minister should present to the Assembly. This clause goes together with the general downgrading of public input and participation in the EIS process. There appears to be no provision for interested parties and ecological experts to challenge or query the adequacy or accuracy of completed EISs, remembering that proponents produce EISs.
The last stage at which the public can comment is while the EIS is still a draft. This is yet another shortcoming of this bill. What appears to be insignificant to one person, say an ACTPLA planning expert, may be recognised by another person as a critical ecosystem. Ecological processes are often so complex and so poorly understood that only one researcher might recognise a critical relationship between ecosystem components that will be adversely impacted by a development proposal. For example, how many people in the ACT are experts on the corroboree frog?
The assessment of environmental impacts is one area where the broadest possible range of expertise should be actively canvassed. It is arrogant, ignorant and presumptuous to assume that the planning agency and the minister’s office have sufficient ecological expertise consistently to make sound judgements about the environmental ramifications of development proposals.
This clause, which is an example of a recurring fault in the legislation and which is based on a “trust us” approach, demonstrates that ACTPLA and the government have not been listening to the feedback that has been consistently offered by the community. Once lost, trust is hard to win back and it has to be earned by actions and not words. Since the PALM days the message has been that the planning authorities are failing adequately to engage with the community, that they are not communicating well with people who are adversely affected by inappropriate developments, and that there are perceptions of pro-development bias and capricious and inconsistent decision making.
The most blatant example is in East O’Malley, where ACTPLA and the government apparently decided that the environmental impact of destroying some of the last remaining yellow box and red gum grassy woodland ecosystem did not amount to a significant environmental impact. Molonglo Valley contains other examples of these ecological communities, and I am not at all certain whether the ACT’s planning authorities have the expertise competently to assess the value of these assets.
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