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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 113 ..

MR MOORE: Mr Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister for Environment, Land and Planning, Mr Humphries. Minister, yesterday you responded to my question - of which I had given you a small amount of notice, unlike today - regarding a Mr John Hyles Junior, who is on your Rural Leases Task Force, by insisting that the environmental degradation offences I referred to were actually the responsibility of Mr John Hyles Senior. Were you aware when you answered that question that, in 1988, Mr Hyles Junior pleaded guilty to two charges arising out of damage to Namadgi National Park caused when he drove a bulldozer for some 6.5 kilometres through the park to create a cattle trail? Mr Speaker, I will quote a couple of very short paragraphs from a newspaper article to clarify this:

The son of a Canberra grazier with one of the largest rural holdings adjacent to Namadgi National Park pleaded guilty yesterday in the Canberra Magistrates' Court to two charges of contravening the Nature Conservation Ordinance.

Somebody from the Parks and Conservation Service had observed that a track of about 6.5 kilometres had been pushed through. Further on it said:

... the service's plant ecologist ... had described the damage in certain areas as severe.

... the area was of ecological significance, as it had wet heaths and herbfields. It was, he pointed out, the north-eastern limit and the low-altitude limit of certain mountain plant species. It was also the breeding habitat of a frog species and two uncommon bird species.

Do you still maintain, Minister, as you did in this place yesterday, that Mr Hyles Junior is not responsible for past acts of environmental degradation and that he is an appropriate appointee to this task force?

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, to answer the first part of Mr Moore's question, no, I was not aware of it when I made the response to the question yesterday, although I did not say to the Assembly that he had not been guilty of environmental damage. I said that he had not been convicted of an offence in the New South Wales Land and Environment Court, as his father had been. However, the convictions to which Mr Moore has drawn our attention were drawn to my attention as well at lunchtime today.

I have asked Mr Gilmour, the head of the Department of Urban Services, to give me advice on the process whereby the appointment was made and whether there was some deficiency in the process whereby these problems or these elements of the background of Mr Hyles were not drawn to the attention of the Government or of me before the appointment was made. I do not know whether that would necessarily result in a different outcome or a different membership of the task force from this point.

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