Page 2100 - Week 06 - Thursday, 8 June 2017
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The amendment comes after considerable consultation with the heritage community, including, but not limited to, the Lake Burley Griffin Guardians, the National Trust, many different community councils and a number of individuals. I would like to thank each and every one of them for their assistance. I hope they felt heard in this process and listened to. I will continue to consult and communicate with the community even if this government will not.
With regard to the Public Place Names Act, we are moving change to section 4 of the act. The government proposes to change the requirements that the minister consult with prescribed entities in relation to public place names that use terms from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages because the current prescribed entity, ATSIC, no longer exists. However, the changes that this bill proposes go too far and require the minister only to take reasonable steps.
It is very difficult to find a definition of “reasonable steps”, especially in the Australian context. There is an example from the UK in R (Croydon Property Forum Limited) v London Borough of Croydon in 2015 which talks about reasonable steps to consult, but it is a high threshold for a claimant challenging a consultation process to reach. I wonder if that is the definition that the government wants.
Maybe the government is considering that reasonable steps to consult are much of a muchness with reasonable skill and knowledge, for which there is an Australian definition under Australian Securities Commission v Gallagher in 1994. But if this is the government’s intention of what “reasonable steps” under the Public Place Names Act means, the minister must act in a way which an ordinary prudent person with the same skill, knowledge and experience as the minister would when taking steps to engage with Indigenous organisations. It is a difficult definition to fulfil. It leaves considerable onus and expensive interpretation up to the courts.
I had a briefing on this matter from the minister’s office eventually, but his staff could not adequately define the minister’s meaning of what “reasonable steps” might actually entail. That is why we are proposing an amendment to this section. It retains the requirement for the minister to consult with an appropriate organisation that represents the interests of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It allows the minister to update the regulations with multiple different cultural groups without the need to consult each of them on every issue. But it does allow for broad consultation with multiple groups and allows the minister to seek the advice of the most appropriate group without placing it under an unfair administrative burden.
Just yesterday, we discussed in the Assembly the lack of consultation and communication from the government, and confusing communication, in relation to the bush healing farm and other Indigenous community groups involved in the bush healing farm. The government’s proposed amendment to the Public Place Names Act will water down the requirements of further consultation and could lead to further difficulties. I will speak a little more about this change in the detail stage.
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