Page 1429 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 3 May 2016
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registration decision is required because it is likely that heritage significance will be diminished if a decision is not made. However, the council may accept an urgent application if it believes that the application is reasonable.
There are also minor policy amendments to the Nature Conservation Act in this bill. The act allows the minister to declare a native species to be a controlled native species if satisfied that it is having an unacceptable impact on an environmental, economic or social asset. As it is often difficult to define social or economic impacts in terms of assets, an amendment removes the word “asset” and instead requires consideration of environmental, economic or social “impacts”. This obviously allows for a broader consideration of environmental, economic or social impacts rather than being limited simply to assessing impacts on assets.
Another amendment allows a declaration to be made where a species is likely to have an unacceptable impact. As the provision is currently drafted, a declaration can only be made where unacceptable impact has occurred. Management measures are therefore reacting to damage caused, restricting the ability to make a declaration where a species is likely to have an impact but where damage has not yet occurred. This is clearly unsatisfactory and limits preventive management measures from being taken. Again, that is a welcome amendment to the act.
There are also a number of minor technical and editorial amendments to the act that I will not go into in detail. Members, no doubt, read the explanatory statement and are aware of those. Overall, in light of those comments, the Greens will be supporting this bill today as I believe it continues to make improvements to a number of important acts in the territory.
MR COE (Ginninderra) (3.58): The opposition will be supporting the Planning, Building and Environment Legislation Amendment Bill 2016. The bill makes minor amendments to planning, building and environment legislation. Many of the amendments fix unintended consequences of the current legislation or clarify uncertain provisions.
The bill amends the Architects Act 2004 to allow the architects board to delegate power to renew or refuse to renew a person’s registration. The registrar of the architects board will be able to complete the renewal process where it is straightforward. In all other cases, the board will still have to make a decision.
The bill amends the Building and Construction Industry (Security of Payment) Act 2009 to allow the minister to cancel, suspend or withdraw an authorisation for a nominating activity. The act currently contemplates an authorisation being cancelled, suspended or withdrawn but does not actually provide the power to do so.
The bill includes several amendments to the Environment Protection Act 1997 and the Environment Protection Regulation 2005. The bill updates the emission and efficiency standards for wood heaters. The new standards bring the ACT requirements into line with the standards in the 2015 national clean air agreement. The limits will be made stricter under provisions that will come into force on 1 September 2019. At this point I note that the opposition supports the removal of dirty wood heaters but we oppose
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