Sage Eugenie; Parker DavidHon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Thank you Madam Chair. One of the many challenges with this bill is its length and complexity and the fact that the Minister has presented a number of changes in his Supplementary Order Paper (SOP)—I think the latest SOP was 3:56 p.m. about 15 minutes before we started debating the committee stages. So I'm not sure that I've come to grips with all of the changes but the use of the revision track changes version is helpful. Could I go to new clause 3A which is the means for achieving the purpose of the Act which the Minister was just referring to and note there that the Minister's SOP is very helpfully using words like outstanding which is referring to intrinsic values which was missed out in the version that the select committee reported back. But in terms of natural features and landscapes there has been a change in new clause 3A(i) that refers to the fact that natural features including geoheritage features—and that was an important change that the select committee made to the bill to recognise geological features—and landscapes that are important at the local and regional scale may be provided for. This is still quite a significant change from the Resource Management Act where the protection of outstanding natural landscapes and features is a matter of national importance. Could the Minister explain what he sees as the purpose of that change through his SOP and whether he sees natural built environment plans the regional plans and the regional planning committees as having quite a responsibility to ensure that those regionally important landscapes and natural features are actually identified and provision is made for their protection? Recognising that the way places of national importance are defined in the bill doesn't require these places at the regional and local level to—doesn't really include them within the definition. So if he could just talk to what he sees that the changes that he's proposing to 3A(i) will achieve.Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): Thank you Madam Chair. I take it that the member is referring to new clause 3A(h) and (i)?Hon Eugenie Sage: Yes.Hon DAVID PARKER: Thank you. The current system enables the protection of a wide range—this is the Resource Management Act system—of biological and historical features and features of cultural significance. The new system aims to—I'll go back a step. The new system aims to categorise those according to two levels measures: matters that are nationally important and matters that are regionally or locally important. In respect of those things that are nationally important this is essentially built on the Australian system where they seem to have achieved a better balance of protecting the truly important but not pretending that the important but not as high level of importance should have the same level of protection. Now why is this important? When Parliament is considering the protection of important matters such as these Parliament has a choice as to whether we have a high level of protection which is seldom breached or a lower level of protection which can often be breached. If Parliament sets up too high a level of protection for everything you effectively frustrate the system and you can build things that you need when you need to too often. So what this section does is try—it doesn't try; it actually achieves the requirement for the nationally important to be identified and then have very very limited exceptions to it.Essentially if it's a matter that's nationally important in respect of a highly vulnerable biodiversity area then that area must be recognised protected and sustained for their intrinsic value for the benefit of present and future generations. Then there are some very specific provisions later in the Act that say that even then you have to have the occasional exception because there are occasions when you can contemplate—but even then there's some important piece of infrastructure that can go nowhere else but the country none the less needs to have. In respect of those highest level of protections it's a very high bar to cross to being able to get an exception and there are only limited exceptions for the likes of those classes of infrastructure. Even then if you got an approval because there was no other practical place that you could put it there would be offsetting requirements in order to offset the adverse effects that were created by that infrastructure that can't be put anywhere else. So other than those exceptions the high level nationally important and highly vulnerable biodiversity areas must be recognised protected and sustained for their intrinsic value and for the benefit of present and future generations—the Australian system and it works in Australia I'm advised.In respect of the lower level—and I don't want to diminish them to say they're irrelevant; they're not but it is wrong to say that everything is just as important. Those matters the protection of natural features including geoheritage and landscapes they're important at the local and regional scale. They can be provided for but they'll generally be provided for in local plans. That's essentially the rationale that lies behind those clauses.