Page 3594 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 21 November 2007
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Sustainable development legislation could significantly assist in the promotion of sustainable development principles in the ACT. Making a formal and long term statutory commitment to sustainable development will mean that these principles will prevail over short-term economic and political trends.
The conservation council also discusses the proposed sustainability legislation on its website. It has three key points:
Firstly legislation can ensure some level of permanency. Administrative structures will of necessity change over time to reflect differing government arrangements. However a key feature of sustainability is a commitment to permanent process and legislation is one way of indicating that.
Secondly legislation would clearly set out the powers and responsibility of the relevant Office and decision-makers.
Thirdly legislative power would require other Departments or Administrative Units to comply and provide inputs for implementation.
Further, I would say that sustainability legislation is needed to make the climate change strategy work. It will be a means for making everything government does a link in the climate change strategy. A sustainable development act would establish the ACT as a leader in Australia in the field of sustainable development. This is a process that government must lead, but there are many individuals and organisations in Canberra that can contribute helpful expertise and experience.
The Auditor-General’s Office has provided a very useful critique on the government’s inability to embed ESD into its work at the departmental level. Everything points to the need for a whole-of-government approach. We need to see sustainability prioritisation starting at the budget-setting level, following through in the strategic indicators and seen again in the annual reporting process. Some of this is happening already, but it is by no means a whole-of-government exercise yet, given that many agencies still find the concept of sustainability foreign to them. Mr Hargreaves indicated that in an answer to a question I asked last year at estimates. A year ago, when I put forward a motion on sustainability issues which included supporting and encouraging sustainability industries in the ACT, Minister Hargreaves said that he did not actually know what sustainability was. I hope that in the meantime he has taken the opportunity to find out what it is.
There are key things that we would like to see in the legislation, including some new initiatives and enshrining existing and earlier practices. We would like to see regular sustainability reports—annual and with agreed and useful indicators across all relevant departments and agencies. We would like to see a sustainability code of practice and action plan. We would like to see the application and implementation of the precautionary principle—and giving it a solid meaning. We recommend that the principle of sustainability be inserted as the object of all relevant legislation.
And we believe that there is a need for a sustainability round table or something like the Sustainability Expert Reference Group, which was in existence early in this term. I
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