Page 2270 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 9 May 2012
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I tabled the commissioner’s report on the Canberra nature park, Molonglo River corridor and Googong foreshores investigation. This report and others compile information from many different sources, including public submissions, community forums, discussions with experts, information from government agencies and from commissioning technical papers. I will be tabling the government’s response to the Canberra nature park report shortly.
In February last year, through the Hawke review—the review of the administration of the territory—Dr Hawke recommended and supported a review of the commissioner’s role, continuing the commissioner’s statutory functions of investigating complaints about agencies’ environmental management actions, preparing state of the environment reports and investigating agencies as directed by the minister or at the commissioner’s own discretion, expanding the title and role of the commissioner to include sustainability, updating the act to reflect the commissioner’s current roles and the commissioner remaining in the environment portfolio with the Environment and Sustainable Development Directorate retaining administrative responsibility.
The government therefore supports some of the proposed amendments in Mr Rattenbury’s bill but seeks to include “sustainability” in the commissioner’s title and rename the act, insert objects about sustainability into the act and expand the scope of state of the environment reporting to include sustainability issues.
The proposal to change the title of the act will affirm the government’s announced expansion of the commissioner’s role to include monitoring environmental sustainability. The customary title of the office has, since September 2007, been Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment.
The bill proposes the insertion of objects into the act. It is current best practice to have objects in an act as they provide clarity of purpose for the legislation. It is appropriate for the objects to reflect regular and consistent reporting on matters relating to the condition of the territory’s environment, reporting on progress towards ecologically sustainable development, encouraging decision making that facilitates ecologically sustainable development, enhancing knowledge and understanding of issues relating to ecologically sustainable development and the environment and encouraging sound environmental practices and procedures to be adopted by the territory and territory authorities as a basis for ecologically sustainable development. These objects are consistent with adopting the goal and definition of ecologically sustainable development.
Matters for state of environment reporting should be defined generically and focus on an assessment of pressures and sustainability trends. The government therefore does not support other detailed clauses in Mr Rattenbury’s bill which, in our view, are too prescriptive and risk duplicating sustainability reporting provisions defined elsewhere, including in other ACT legislation. For example, I know that the government currently reports annually on its water, energy and resource use through agency annual reports under existing legislation.
The government proposes that assessment of plans be restricted to only those government plans tabled as disallowable instruments in the Assembly. The
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