Page 1430 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 3 May 2016
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any restrictions on allowing home owners to install this more efficient form of heating. Well-maintained and ventilated wood heaters can provide highly efficient heating and we should not be seeking to make it harder to install them.
The bill also amends the Environment Protection Regulation 2005 to allow off-label use of agvet chemicals by a vet or another person following the vet’s instructions to treat an animal under the vet’s care.
The bill includes a number of amendments to the Heritage Act 2004, which are the result of the 12-month review of amendments made in 2014. The bill amends the heritage significance criteria to include the word “important”. The inclusion of “important” means there is a clear threshold for registering places or objects with the potential to yield information. Places or objects—mainly archaeological sites—must have the potential to yield important information. This will ensure that only places or objects of territory level significance or higher are registered on the ACT Heritage Register.
The bill inserts criteria for the council to assess whether an application for urgent provisional registration should be accepted. The criteria include the council being satisfied that the significance of a place or object is likely to be diminished or damaged. If the council determines that an application should not be considered urgently, then the application will continue through the usual process.
The bill sets out information to be included in a notice of decision to not provisionally register a heritage place or object. It also expands access to restricted information about heritage places or objects and allows the Heritage Council to give a heritage direction to the custodian of an object and not just the owner. Giving a direction to the custodian of an object increases the protection for objects, given that protected objects are not always in the possession of their owners.
The bill allows the Heritage Council to extend the consultation period for a heritage registration decision. The current legislation provides a four-week period of public consultation with no power to extend this consultation period. The amendments will allow the Heritage Council to extend the consultation by giving public notice.
The bill clarifies the consultation requirements to ensure that all comments are received in writing. This makes it clear that oral comments are not taken to be comments for the sake of the Heritage Act. Apparently there have been cases where people have made oral comments during the consultation period and expected those comments to be included as official submissions. This could lead to problems because people who make submissions must be notified of decisions and also receive review rights. If they are not deemed to have made a submission, they are not given these rights.
The bill amends the Nature Conservation Act 2014 and the Environment Protection Regulation 2005 in relation to controlled native species. The bill allows the minister to declare a native species to be a controlled native species if the species is having an unacceptable environmental, economic or social impact. The minister may also make a declaration in the case where the species is likely to have an unacceptable impact.
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