Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 08 Hansard (Thursday, 5 August 2004) . . Page.. 3542 ..

(4.39), in reply: I will speak very briefly, Mr Deputy Speaker. Isn’t it funny how we either act too quickly or not quickly enough but never at the right pace? Given that there were some derogatory remarks made, let me just say that Totalcare was just one of the many disasters that we were required to fix up. I find it ironic that the party that would claim to be closer to business could be so hopeless at everything they touched. I would like you to list for me your successes versus your failures in enterprise over six years in government. The list would be quite illuminating. I commend the motion to the house.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Pharmacy Amendment Bill 2004 (No 2)

Discharge from notice paper

MR WOOD (Minister for Disability, Housing and Community Services, Minister for Urban Services, Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Minister for Arts and Heritage and Acting Minister for Planning) (4.40): Pursuant to standing order 152, I move:

That order of the day No 1, Executive business, be discharged from the notice paper.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Heritage Bill 2004

Debate resumed from 14 May 2004, on motion by Mr Wood:

That this bill be agreed to in principle.

MRS DUNNE (4.41): This is a very important piece of legislation that has been a long time in the making. I think that, probably at about this stage of the previous Assembly, a bill was introduced to amend heritage law. Since then we have seen exposure drafts and, more recently, we have seen the government’s final effort. As a result of that we are here today to debate a bill. I am sad to say that, in the course of this speech, I am going to have to say some fairly harsh words about what overall has been some fairly shabby treatment meted out to a whole range of people in the course of this debate and especially over the last week in the single-minded pursuit of getting this bill passed. Unfortunately, this is a very flawed bill.

There a question I often ask myself, which people also often ask us: in the ACT when we, as legislators, come to do something for the first time or relook at something, why do we always have to reinvent the wheel? Why, as a small jurisdiction, do we have to prove how plucky we are by starting from taws and always building everything from the ground up as if nothing existed before?

This is a very important issue in relation to the Heritage Bill simply because in Australia most jurisdictions use provisions that are used by the Commonwealth in their heritage legislation—this has been emulated by Queensland, the Northern Territory and Tasmania and you might call it “national template legislation”—but no: little old ACT has to go out and do it by itself. One of the really important questions we should ask ourselves is: why, when there is effectively national template legislation, the definitions in clause 10—one

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .