Page 3814 - Week 12 - Thursday, 24 October 2013
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minister the authority to grant permission if they are satisfied that it would not be contrary to the interests of public health. This bill clarifies that provisions in the Cemeteries and Crematoria Act apply to foetal remains. The bill also gives cemetery operators the right to seek review of an improvement notice issued by the director-general.
The amendments to the Stock Act 2005 and Stock Regulation 2005 allow the minister to set both the stock levy and the minimum stock levy payable by rural lessees who run livestock. The minimum stock levy determination will be a disallowable instrument.
The opposition is pleased to support this bill, which tidies up legislation in the TAMS portfolio. I commend the TAMS Directorate for the work that has gone into this legislation and hope that further reform to TAMS legislation will be made possible under the omnibus approach.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo—Minister for Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Corrections, Minister for Housing, Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs and Minister for Ageing) (12.15), in reply: I thank members for their support of this bill today. The Territory and Municipal Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2013 is a bill that makes minor and technical amendments to several pieces of legislation within the TAMS portfolio. Specifically, the bill amends the Animal Diseases Act 2005, the Animal Diseases Regulation 2006, the Cemeteries and Crematoria Act 2003, the Stock Act 2005 and the Stock Regulation 2005.
I outlined the most noteworthy amendments contained in this bill when I presented it to the Assembly in June. I would now like to draw members’ attention to three amendments in the bill in particular—one amendment to the Cemeteries and Crematoria Act and two to the Stock Act.
Clause 1.29 of the bill inserts a new item 3 into schedule 1 of the Cemeteries and Crematoria Act, which is the act’s schedule of reviewable decisions. This amendment provides that an operator of a cemetery or crematorium will now have an additional merits review right to the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal, or ACAT. Specifically, the amendment will allow review of a decision by the director-general to issue an improvement notice requiring an operator to end a contravention of the act, to remedy any consequences of a contravention of the act, or both.
I am advised that, to date, the director-general has never had to issue such an improvement notice to a cemetery or crematorium operator. I think that it is important, however, that if the circumstance arose where the director-general issued an improvement notice, an operator affected by that decision should have the opportunity to have the decision looked at by an independent body such as the ACAT.
The second and third amendments in the bill that I think are important to bring to members’ attention are to the Stock Act 2005. Clause 1.33 of the bill inserts a new section 7(2) into the Stock Act. This amendment inserts a requirement into the Stock Act that the director-general’s determination of stock-carrying capacity of a piece of land be made by notifiable instrument. As members are aware, notifiable instruments
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