Page 2177 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 21 June 2011
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needs to pay excessive cost to remediate sites with particularly bad soil contamination is a sound policy proposal. Obviously, it would need to be clarified through this regulation whether the government or another entity should be responsible for the mediation costs and in which circumstances.
There is also a clause in our amendment which allows the Treasurer to outline other circumstances in which a lease change variation charge may be remitted. That could potentially include offsite works, which Mr Seselja has touched upon. Something else that he has touched upon—possibly it was Mr Smyth or both members—was transparency and accountability. This is something the Greens feel quite strongly about. We believe it is extremely important that remissions of charges are made public and we propose for this reason that all remissions and their reasons are published on the ACTPLA website.
The Greens, in presenting the amendments that Ms Hunter will be presenting on Thursday, are seeking to improve this legislation and to add incentives which will promote developments in line with our environmental and social goals. We hope that other parties will be open to supporting these goals and will support our amendments.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (8.53): As Mr Seselja has said, the Canberra Liberals will be opposing this legislation, and I would like to dwell on some of the reasons why this is such a terrible piece of legislation and why it probably offends the constitutionality of the ACT. This is an important issue and of course—
Mr Barr: The constitutionality?
Ms Gallagher: Not picked up by scrutiny, I don’t think, that issue.
MRS DUNNE: Well, let us get to the issue of the scrutiny of bills committee report. The commentary of the scrutiny of bills committee treads into the constitutionality of the minister in this place being able to set a tax by regulation. It is unprecedented and, for the most part, wrong in law and wrong in terms of the constitutional powers that legislatures have.
Before I get on to that, I will deal with some of the other matters that have been touched on by the scrutiny of bills committee, because they touch on important issues in relation to this legislation. The advisers to the scrutiny of bills committee have drawn to our attention—and it has been drawn to the attention of the Assembly—that there are provisions within this legislation that impact upon the human rights legislation and some which are an inappropriate delegation of legislative power.
The advisers to the scrutiny of bills committee make considerable mention of the fact that there are impacts on the rights of property owners and compensation for the loss of property which need to be addressed in considering this legislation. The committee identified the effect of the operation of this scheme. Because it is a scheme that is done by reference to a code or matrix, it has an effect which, on the surface of it, seems to be an effect where everyone is treated evenly, but it has unintended consequences.
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