Page 1583 - Week 05 - Thursday, 8 May 2008
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• protect the interests of tenants, many of whom are vulnerable and experiencing disadvantage;
• ensure that public funds provided for affordable housing activities are appropriately managed and utilised; and
• preserve transferred government assets for future generations.
I commend the bill to the Assembly.
Debate (on motion by Dr Foskey) adjourned to the next sitting.
Namadgi national park—revised draft plan of management
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (11.16): I move:
That this Assembly authorises for publication the Namadgi National Park—Revised Draft Plan of Management, dated October 2007, that was referred to the Standing Committee on Planning and Environment pursuant to section 203 of the Land (Planning and Environment) Act 1991.
Mr Speaker, the motion I am moving today is entirely unprecedented in the history of the Legislative Assembly, and I do not take the matter lightly. I have taken considerable advice about the steps that, as a member of this Assembly and as a member of a standing committee, I can take in relation to ensuring that committees and the Assembly operate as well as possible and in the interests of the community as far as possible.
I am very minded of the constraints placed upon me as a member of the Standing Committee on Planning and Environment and the constraints placed on me by standing order 241. At no stage in the remarks that I will make will I divulge anything that has been said by me or to me or divulge any of the decisions so far made by the planning and environment committee.
I will go back and start with a bit of chronology and a bit of background. As we all know, Namadgi national park makes up approximately 50 per cent of the ACT’s land mass; it must have, in accordance with the legislation, a management plan. This is the first revision of the management plan of Namadgi national park since self-government.
This has been a long, drawn-out process; it was over five years from when the process started until the revised draft management plan arrived in the planning and environment committee. There are a lot of reasons for that; some of it was that there were a lot of hold-ups because of the 2003 bushfires. I do not want to be overly critical of the time delays, especially in the period between 2003 and 2005, because at that time I think the view was taken—and I do not resile from this view—that there were on-the-ground land management issues that were more important and that resources should be put into those rather than into the draft management plan.
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