Page 4019 - Week 13 - Thursday, 10 November 1994
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NATIONAL ENVIRONMENT PROTECTION COUNCIL BILL 1994
MR WOOD (Minister for Education and Training, Minister for the Arts and Heritage and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (10.57): Madam Speaker, I present the National Environment Protection Council Bill 1994.
Title read by Clerk.
MR WOOD: Madam Speaker, I move:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
I ask for leave to have my speech incorporated in Hansard.
Leave not granted.
MR WOOD: I thank Mr Stevenson for his great interest.
Mr Connolly: Dennis, I have 12 of them and I will read really slowly, just at you.
Mr Stevenson: The question is: Why?
Mr Connolly: Because you are delaying debate on your CIR, you dill.
MADAM SPEAKER: Order! Mr Wood has the floor.
MR WOOD: Madam Speaker, the National Environment Protection Council Bill is an important landmark in the history of environment protection in the ACT and Australia. It marks the commitment of the Commonwealth and the States and Territories to work cooperatively to develop national environment protection measures. These measures will aim to give all Australians the benefit of equivalent environmental protection and to ensure that investment decisions by business are not distorted by inappropriate variations in environmental standards between Australian jurisdictions or so-called pollution havens. Establishment of the National Environment Protection Council and the mandatory implementation of national environment protection measures are part of the Intergovernmental Agreement on the Environment, to which the ACT is a signatory. The signing of this intergovernmental agreement in 1992 represented an important turning point in Commonwealth, State and Territory relations in the field of environmental management.
The objectives of the agreement bear repeating. That agreement provides a framework to facilitate: A cooperative national approach to the environment; a better definition of the roles of the respective governments; a reduction in the number of disputes between the Commonwealth, States and Territories on environmental issues; greater certainty of government and business decision making; and, importantly, better environmental protection through the integration of environmental considerations into the decision making processes of all governments at the project, program and policy levels.
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