Page 2546 - Week 08 - Thursday, 14 August 2014
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The commonwealth requires the ACT to have equivalent standards for protecting matters of national environmental significance. This bill adopts the commonwealth’s offsets policy and provides supplementary information for ACT matters. The creation of an offsets policy gives the ACT better control over its environmental outcomes and a more cohesive and planned approach to the management of offsets.
The formal making of the offsets policy comes after extensive public consultation during June and July 2014 and is proposed to be a function of the Minister for the Environment. All public comments received in this period were carefully considered in the final draft. The offsets policy will help proponents in the ACT to propose acceptable offsets and it will help both the planning authority and the conservator to consider those offsets proposed.
Madam Speaker, the bill allows for the imposition of offset conditions, including conditions requiring offset management plans. This includes the preparation of an offset management plan to include mandatory consultation with the conservator and the land custodian or lessee. This achieves two key things: firstly, it ensures effective independent scrutiny of the offset management plan and, secondly, it ensures the appropriate land manager is involved in developing the plan.
The bill also recognises that an offset condition may include a condition requiring a lease for an offset site, which is not part of the development site, to be subject to a condition that the lessee must comply with any relevant offset management plan applicable to the lease. This provision ensures that a condition requiring an offset management plan for a site, that is not the development site, is specified in the lease so that the requirement to implement an offset management plan does not expire when the development approval expires.
The ACT is in a unique position to use its leasing framework to help strengthen the security of offsets. A number of amendments are proposed in this bill and they will provide greater community involvement in the assessment process and easier access to information on assessments and approvals. For example, the bill requires public consultation on applications for an exemption from completing an environmental impact statement under section 211 of the Planning and Development Act and requires public consultation on any draft revised offsets policy and draft guidelines.
The bill also requires the planning authority to keep an electronic public record of all offsets in the ACT. Under the amendments, the conservator will be able to include conditions on an environmental significance opinion. These conditions will be a mandatory consideration for merit track development applications. The conditions must also be included in any subsequent development application approval and this strengthens the role of the conservator and ensures that relevant environmental considerations are captured in the development application process.
In closing, I would like to reiterate that passing this bill is a prerequisite to creating a one-stop shop for environmental assessments and approvals for developments under the EPBC Act. I would also like to reiterate that the bill introduces requirements that ensure the commonwealth will retain an ongoing role in development approvals.
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