Page 4236 - Week 13 - Thursday, 27 November 2014
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A noteworthy improvement to this legislation is that it is comprehensive and looks to protect nature more broadly as a concept rather than the original 1980 act, which had a more reductionist focus on plants, animals and reserved areas. There has also been substantial work done to modernise the act to bring it line with this century’s legislative drafting style as well as that of other jurisdictions.
Considerable work was done to create objects of this act. The previous iteration does not have objects at all. The bill has two pages outlining its objects and introduces new concepts such as restoring habitat, community species and genetic biological diversity, ecological connectivity to ecosystem processes, and recognition of the role of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in conservation and ecologically sustainable use of biodiversity, amongst other things. Importantly, the minister must have regard to the objects of the act as well as the Conservator of Flora and Fauna.
The bill also incorporates better processes to allow for consideration of the impacts and challenges of climate change and integrates productive management principles into various plan review processes. Through the various consultation and negotiation discussions, we have tried to ensure that all decision-makers—the minister, the Conservator of Flora and Fauna, the Parks and Conservation Service and the scientific committee—should have to give effect to the objects of the act.
We have also looked into requiring decision-makers to act consistently with any conservator guidelines, the nature conservation strategy and all relevant plans, lists or agreements, and have regard to the findings of monitoring programs. I believe that this bill does these things fairly well, but we will monitor this of course over future years as it practically rolls out.
It is fitting that it in this year, while we also celebrate 30 years of the Parks and Conservation Service, we give the ACT’s conservation management system a new broom. At the same time there are still many pressures to come that are not adequately dealt with in this bill, and we hope that we have established enough mechanisms to allow for timely revisions of the consequential plans and strategies.
I would like to focus on some of the details of the bill, because there is a huge list of issues that have been improved in this bill before us today, far too many to fully itemise. Some examples include the introduction of the concept of biodiversity as key to nature conservation and new requirements for biodiversity research and monitoring programs. Also the role of the Conservator of Flora and Fauna under current legislation has very few legal requirements, meaning that it only needs to be a public servant appointed by the director-general. The new bill better clarifies the role and outlines a broader role and range of requirements, including providing information to the environment commissioner for the state of the environment report. This includes the need for suitable qualifications and experience.
The conservator must monitor the state of nature conservation generally in the ACT and the effective management of nature conservation in the territory. In exercising those functions the conservator must have regard to the objects of the act, any conservator guidelines and the nature conservation strategy for the ACT. This is one
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