Page 3108 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 17 October 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Further, the committee recommends that it be made mandatory for the ACT Planning and Land Authority to consult with the Conservator of Flora and Fauna and the Environmental Protection Authority when compiling the list of consultants for development plans and when drafting regulations under the act.
I would like to thank the committee for their efforts on this report. I would especially like to thank Dr Hanna Jaireth and the Committee Office for their hard work on this detailed report. I commend the report to the Assembly.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo) (10.42): I would like to say a few words in relation to the report and the bill itself, which we will obviously be debating later on. The committee worked very hard. There are a lot of recommendations here to try and improve this bill. I think there was a genuine effort from all three members of the committee to try and make this a better bill. There was an acknowledgment on the part of the minister and officials when they appeared—especially the second time—that, as this is an exposure draft, they were genuinely open to suggestions. We have certainly proceeded in that spirit, with a view to hopefully making this a better bill than that initially presented to the community and the committee.
The first thing I would say on planning system reform generally is that the Liberal opposition are supportive of the general thrust of planning system reform. The move to adopt the DAF model, moving to development tracks, has the potential, if properly implemented, to significantly improve the planning system in the ACT. To that end, we certainly support the basic idea behind the planning system reform process. We may differ on a lot of the detail provisions and of course in the implementation, which is going to be very important to ensure that this works.
Mr Gentleman mentioned issues around codes—code track, merit track and impact track. In relation to the code track, it is going to be very important that we get the certifying process and the codes right. Those codes need to be rigorous, but they also need to be understandable. That is going to take some work. Mr Gentleman mentioned that the HIA raised the issue that they would like to see the codes. The sooner industry can see the codes, the more we will know about how this may play out and how this legislation might work in practice.
The idea of territory plan simplification is good but, once again, we have not seen that because it has not yet occurred. How the rewritten territory plan looks is also going to be important. I support the general thrust of making it simpler, but exactly how that is done will be very important to ensuring that we have a workable planning system. The question arises that we are going to be simplifying the territory plan, which will make it less necessary for variations to occur, but at the same time it will no longer be necessary for all variations to come before the planning and environment committee. So I question the need to remove automatic referral to that committee, simply because I think there will be a lot fewer variations. That is something that the committee would probably be able to handle.
I will touch on a couple of specific issues of concern that were raised with the committee. I only made one additional comment. Most of the changes I wanted are
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .