Page 3576 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 19 October 1993

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That is the matter to which I referred. The Law Society says:

The Society considers it inappropriate that the vast majority of honest, standard and necessary commercial transactions involving conditional contracts should be affected by the actions of a few.

They go on at great length, explaining their exception to this matter. This had not been brought to my attention previously, although I notice that there has been earlier communication from the Law Society to the Chief Minister. We do not know what she did with that earlier communication. Since this one is dated today, 19 October, and raises significant issues, I think we would be quite wrong to proceed with the debate and either pass or reject the Bill without giving consideration to these matters.

Debate (on motion by Mrs Carnell) adjourned.

LAND (PLANNING AND ENVIRONMENT) (AMENDMENT) BILL (NO. 3) 1993

Debate resumed from 16 September 1993, on motion by Mr Wood:

That this Bill be agreed to in principle.

MR KAINE (3.33): Mr Deputy Speaker, this Bill has the support of the Opposition. Again it is a Bill that tidies up the original Land Bill. Matters have been identified that either are anomalous or were not clear in the original Bill and the Minister has moved to address three issues. There are no detrimental effects for members of the community and we therefore support the Bill. When the Land Act was passed by this Assembly I noted that this new law, together with the new Territory Plan, which became law only yesterday, merely formed a new baseline from which change would take place. It is obvious that we are not going to remain static. There always will be things emerging, both from the law and from the plan, which cause people difficulty and where circumstances will require change. This is simply such a case. The implementation of the Act over a two-year period has demonstrated that these three particular matters need attention in the public interest, and we support the Minister in his attempt to make the Act more workable.

MR MOORE (3.35): The tenor of what I have to say is similar to that presented by Mr Kaine. Ms Szuty and I looked very carefully at clause 5, which amends section 19 of the principal Act by adding at the end the following subsection:

This section does not apply in relation to a draft Plan variation that has been revised by the Authority pursuant to a direction under paragraph 26(1)(b).

That paragraph relates to where the Executive sends something back to the Planning Authority to be redone or reviewed. Our immediate concern, Mr Deputy Speaker, was that in some way community consultation or public consultation will be cut. We discussed this with Mr Wood's officers who briefed us on this, and also with Mr Kaine. On carefully reviewing it, it is quite clear that


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