Page 1616 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 8 May 2018
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legislation administered by the Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate. The government uses omnibus bills as a way of remaining agile and responsive to changing circumstances and to ensure that the ACT’s statute book remains up to date. This process plays an important part in ensuring that our legislation is futureproofed, to clarify provisions and to allow the government to go about its core business efficiently.
To make things easier, from this point on I will just refer to the bill as PABELAB. PABELAB makes minor policy and technical amendments to four pieces of legislation: the City Renewal Authority and Suburban Land Agency Act 2017, the Heritage Act 2004, the Nature Conservation Act 2014, and the Planning and Development Regulation 2008.
I will start by speaking to the amendment to the Heritage Act 2004. Currently, the ACT Heritage Council has the power to make a decision whether or not to end the registration of a place or object. Section 49(2) of the Heritage Act requires the council to be satisfied on reasonable grounds that the place or object no longer has heritage significance even if the council decides not to end the registration. Clause 10 of the PABELAB proposes removing this redundant requirement. Section 49(2) of the Heritage Act is being amended so that the council only has to be satisfied on reasonable grounds that the place or object no longer has heritage significance when it decides to end the registration.
Consultation is a very important part of the process of developing government policy, and I can advise that the National Trust of Australia ACT and the office of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs were both consulted on this proposed amendment.
The second matter I want to address is the amendments to the Nature Conservation Act 2014. These amendments relate to consultation on draft native species conservation plans and draft controlled native species management plans, which I will refer to collectively as “draft plans”. Draft plans are prepared by the Conservator of Flora and Fauna and detail how native species and controlled native species may be appropriately managed.
Clauses 11, 12 and 13 of the PABELAB amend sections 119 and 161 of the Nature Conservation Act to only require the conservator to consult with the lessee or custodian of unleased or public land if a draft plan requires or prohibits a certain action. The PABELAB clarifies that the conservator is not required to consult in relation to something that a person may do under the draft plan, even if the draft plan specifies that the action must be done in a certain way.
These amendments to the Nature Conservation Act ensure that the conservator can focus on protecting our native species in an administratively effective way.
The third item I wish to address today from the PABELAB is the proposed amendments to the Planning and Development Regulation 2008, which relate to draft variations to the Territory Plan. The planning and land authority must prepare a consultation notice for draft plan variations and provide this notice to each person prescribed by regulation.
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