Page 1702 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 3 May 2005
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understanding of what is happening if someone with as much experience on the land as my father would go and plant an invasive plant in his front garden believing that it must be all right because it was in the nursery. The nurseries have a lot to do, and this government has a lot to do, still. There is much good work that has been done with nurseries in the ACT—but very much through voluntary cooperation between the Conservation Council and the nurserymen, not through the actions of government.
This report goes on to talk about poor alignment between state and territory declared weed lists. This is just appalling when you think of the cost. It says:
Over 40% of the naturalised invasive garden plants declared noxious in one or more jurisdictions are still for sale in another.
So, even if New South Wales does declare lantana to be a noxious plant, we could still buy it here—and I have actually seen it in nurseries here. The report continues:
This includes Weeds of National Significance … and other nationally important invasive plants. As the CSIRO report … notes “while plants can be moved freely inter-state, such a situation becomes untenable nationally.
It refers to lantana camara, a weed of national significance which is both declared noxious and prohibited for sale in Queensland but is still available for sale in New South Wales and right up to the Queensland border. This is why we really should be taking a much more concerted approach. What the government has done is good, but it is not good enough. What the World Wide Fund recommends is that we take a much more proactive set of steps. There are a number of recommendations in this report that I think it would be useful for the government to take into account. But, if we are getting to the “Well, I’ve done it and it is mine and we’re not going to change it” mode of operation, heaven help farmers and land managers generally in the ACT.
In concluding my remarks I just draw attention to the fact that in this bill there are three instances of strict liability offences. It has become my wont of late to give an exposition on strict liability offences and I would draw members’ attention to clause 10 of the pest plants and animals legislation and suggest that, if we are going to have strict liability offences in legislation, this is how you do it. This should be a template for how strict liability offences appear in legislation. I put it on the record that this is what I expect to see when we are talking about strict liability offences. I had a lengthy discussion with officials the other day about strict liability offences in this and other legislation, and I was absolutely appalled at the lack of understanding of the implications and the fairly cavalier approach if somebody does something by accident of, “Well, that’s just too bad and we’ll fang you anyhow.”
I refer members to clause 10, because this is what I think a strict liability offence should look like. It says that a person commits an offence if the person in the conduct of his business does particular things. So what it actually says is, “If you should know and you act irresponsibly, we’ll fang you.” But, if you are walking around Auntie Flossie’s garden and you say, “Gee, I like the look of that” and she cuts you two or three cuttings and you take it home and put it in your garden, that should not be a strict liability offence, because you and Auntie Flossie may not know that something is an invasive weed. There should be education to encourage people to take invasive weeds out of their gardens. In other legislation that will come before the Assembly there are many offences
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