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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 14 Hansard (12 December) . . Page.. 4857 ..

MS HORODNY (continuing):

neighbouring blocks. I will talk more about this in the detail stage. In summary, we cannot support this Bill in its current form. We will be proposing some amendments to the Bill later, but we admit that these amendments are really just fiddling basically around the edges. The major provisions of this Bill to restructure the planning administration in the ACT and the development approval process cannot really be amended without destroying the whole basis of the Bill. We feel that we have no alternative but to vote against the Bill in principle.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (5.30), in reply: Mr Speaker, I will be brief in my response. The Government stands by the view that this legislation is necessary and appropriate and broadly reflects the recommendations made to the Government by the Stein inquiry. I know that Mr Moore and others will object strenuously to elements of the Stein inquiry which are not picked up, but Mr Moore knows that every government has the privilege of selectively applying its own intelligence and its own policy to inquiries and reports it receives. Any government which slavishly followed every submission put before it by people it pays to do so would be a very foolish government indeed.

It follows, Mr Speaker, that in rejecting 14 of the approximately 100 recommendations of the Stein inquiry the Government has behaved in a way which is appropriate to the circumstances it found itself in. Mr Moore might not be prepared to admit it - I suspect that the Greens are not aware of it because they have not been around long enough - but there are very serious problems with the way in which the Land Act in this Territory operates. I might point out at this point that a lot of them had to do with the fact that when the Land Act was put forward in 1992 or 1991 on the floor of the Assembly there were a very large number of amendments that came forward on the floor - - -

Mr Moore: You can take advice. I think it was 171.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Moore says that there were 171 amendments. Mr Moore assists me. It is the only time tonight that he will do that. There were 171 amendments that came forward on the day that it was debated and some of them were not well considered. The result was a very inadequate piece of legislation in some areas. Mr Speaker, tonight a very large number of amendments are being put to the house which I think bear the hallmarks of a rush job and which ought not to be accepted by the Assembly. Other amendments, with respect, are not particularly unfamiliar in their intent but certainly amount to something with which we would disagree and which we have had debate about before, and I make no apologies for again opposing them on the floor of this place.

Mr Speaker, I do not think we should further delay some refinements to the Land Act. A very large number of proposals we put forward here are based on Stein, and others are based on decisions that we announced some time ago. They have been well canvassed. Many of the changes we are putting in place tonight were announced in my ministerial statement in the middle of last year. There is no excuse whatever for Mr Moore or Ms Horodny to say in this debate, "We have not had time to prepare our proposals on this matter". It simply is an untenable argument.

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