Page 2273 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 9 May 2012
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I can appreciate the element of this bill to deal with Minister Corbell’s delay in tabling documents like the state of the environment report. We do not agree with Mr Rattenbury’s attempt to expand the role of the commissioner. In essence, this amounts to nothing more than trading red tape for green tape. In both instances Canberra residents are no better off for it.
We have already seen, by perverting the essential meaning of “sustainable development”, the ability to frustrate the development in Throsby which was land intentionally left fallow for the stated purpose of future residential development. We have seen how it halted the development of a much-needed Catholic school and wasted committed funds, not to mention a much-anticipated community sports field.
With this in mind, it is worthy to note clause 9, which broadens the commissioner’s functions to include sustainability matters and which gives him or her the ability to investigate sustainable development complaints. And this is followed through in clause 10. Furthermore the definition that this bill gives of sustainable development does not preclude such cases. I think that what we would be inviting is further delays in reasonable development within the ACT and another layer of green tape when we already have more than enough.
We do not support the Greens’ approach to this bill. We believe that even the requirements in terms of reporting are overly prescriptive. I think they are born out of frustration with the government and we do not believe that we should be making laws in response to that frustration. What we should simply be doing is demanding better from our leaders, not having to regulate absolutely every aspect of reasonable government behaviour. There is the ability to keep ministers accountable when they do unreasonably delay but we do not believe that legislation in this space is necessary and therefore we will not be supporting Mr Rattenbury’s bill.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (5.15), in reply: I thank members in varying degrees for their contributions to the debate. The central purpose of this legislation was really to refresh the environment commissioner’s act, and my introductory speech touched on many of those points. But it has been interesting to work through the discussion on how various members have interpreted the intent of the proposed amendments and to hear some of the positions in the chamber today for the first time.
Really the point of these amendments was twofold. One was to refresh the legislation and acknowledge some of the changes that have taken place in recent times and to ensure the legislation reflected the current practice. Some of those are around names. I think they are some of the more straightforward amendments and I thank the government for their support on those ones.
I think the second half of it then got into almost a philosophical discussion about where the Commissioner for the Environment sits in the ACT government structure. And certainly in the Greens’ minds, the commissioner is there as an independent role, somebody who actually assesses what is going on and provides advice to all members of the Assembly, in our view, on what progress is being made in the ACT, areas where we need to improve and how we might go about those improvements.
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