Page 1242 - Week 04 - Thursday, 7 April 2016
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MR GENTLEMAN (Brindabella—Minister for Planning and Land Management, Minister for Racing and Gaming and Minister for Workplace Safety and Industrial Relations) (10.11): I move:
That this bill be agreed to in principle.
The government is presenting the Planning, Building and Environment Legislation Amendment Bill 2016. The PABELAB process is used to manage all minor policy, technical and editorial amendments that are required to be made to legislation administered by the Environment and Planning Directorate.
This omnibus bill provides an efficient avenue for introducing these amendments through consolidating minor changes into a single bill. It is also effective in providing a clear process for the wider community to access and understand minor changes being made to environment and planning legislation.
This is the 10th bill to be created under the PABELAB process, which continues to improve the operation of territory legislation, ensures that it reflects best practice and delivers good environmental and planning outcomes. The bill makes minor amendments to planning portfolio legislation, including: the Architects Act 2004; the Building and Construction Industry (Security of Payment) Act 2009; the Electrical Safety Act 1971; the Heritage Act 2004; the Planning and Development Act 2007; and the Planning and Development Regulation.
The following environment and climate change portfolio legislation is also amended: the Environment Protection Act 1997; the Environment Protection Regulation 2005; the Nature Conservation Act 2014; the Utilities Act 2000; the Utilities (Electrical Transmission) Regulation 2006, which is to be repealed; and the Utilities (Technical Regulation) Act 2014. Finally, the bill also amends the Work Health and Safety Regulation 2011.
Now I would like to introduce a number of the more significant amendments to the bill, including changes to improve the territory’s air quality and to improve administrative and decision-making processes under the Heritage Act. I would like to introduce principal amendments of the bill, found in clauses 9 to 21, which improve air quality regulation.
On 15 December 2015, state and territory environment ministers endorsed the national clean air agreement. Part of that agreement included the adoption of updated Australian standards that set out energy efficiency and emission limits for solid fuel burning equipment such as wood heaters. The amendments to the Environment Protection Act and the Environment Protection Regulation insert new energy efficiency and emissions limits into ACT law. This will ensure that all new wood heaters sold in the ACT must meet the updated Australian standards for energy efficiency and particulate emissions. These amendments will improve air quality by reducing pollution from wood heaters.
It is important to note that these amendments relate to the sale of new wood heaters only and there is no impact on those Canberrans with existing wood heaters. However,
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