Ms ELLIS (1:13 PM) —It is my pleasure to speak on the presentation of the report entitled Norfolk Island: review of the annual reports of the Department of Transport and Regional Services and the Department of the Environment and Heritage. I welcome the comments made by my colleague the member for Blair, the previous speaker. I take this opportunity at the outset to put on the public record here in this place my personal condolences to the family of Ivens `Toon' Buffett, a minister of the Norfolk Island government who tragically died recently. He was a gentleman whom we all met through the committee and he died very tragically. As people would know, his son is now facing some charges relating to that death. To the government of Norfolk Island, the people of the community and, in particular, Toon Buffett's family I think we would all join together in sending our very warmest wishes and condolences at this time.

Nevertheless, we have this report to deal with. As my colleague has said, this annual report review was conducted in conjunction with the committee's inquiry into governance on Norfolk Island, and these recommendations are tied to that previous report. I have to endorse what my colleague said. I strongly shared the concern that all members of the committee had when we were faced with the situation where many members of the Norfolk Island community clearly wanted to talk to the committee, but they and their families were very much in fear of reprisal if they did so. To support these people, the committee happily agreed to hear them in camera. Whilst that gave us an opportunity to get a better understanding of the problems from their perspective, of course we cannot refer to that sort of information publicly. But it did give us a good understanding of the extent and depth of the problems on Norfolk Island.

The previous speaker made mention of a particular part of the report which we on this side joined with the Democrat members to dissent from. The government members of the committee support the conversion of residential crown leasehold to freehold title on Norfolk Island. Labor and our Democrat colleagues lodged a dissent from that recommendation. We dissented from recommendations 2, 8 and 9. The dissenting members believe that the heritage values on Norfolk Island are of national and international significance and that, as a consequence, the Commonwealth has an inescapable obligation to ensure that the arrangements for the long-term protection and day-to-day management of those heritage values are of an appropriate standard. We disagreed primarily with the approach adopted by the committee in relation to any proposed new land management and planning arrangements on the island.

If members have not already done so, I recommend that they take the opportunity to read this report in full, particularly the dissenting report, so they have a better understanding about exactly why we reached those conclusions. It is worth noting that in the overwhelming majority of cases—I do not know what the percentage is, but it would virtually be 99 per cent, I think, or very close to that—committee reports from this parliament are unanimous. So there is usually a fairly good reason for members to dissent and make their views known. It is not a commonly done thing, and I would endorse the comments in that dissenting report and urge people to have a look at it.

I want to thank the chair and my committee colleagues for the work we did together on this particular report. To say that our work on the Norfolk Island governance annual report and our continuing work has been simple would be wrong. It has been a very trying and testing time for the committee. It is fair to say that we are absolutely resolved to come down on the side of the people of Norfolk Island and to do what we can to assist them. There is no doubt that assistance is needed. There is no doubt that Norfolk Island is generally facing some pretty tough times, and I think we all feel responsible for working out how to deal with that. Again, I thank my colleagues and I also thank the committee secretariat for their work. In particular, I want to thank the participants from all parts of government, especially those people from Norfolk Island who were happy to share their experiences and views with the committee either in camera or otherwise. Norfolk Island is a very beautiful place. The people who live on it deserve our support. I hope that, as a result of the work done so far and the work to be done in the future, we can provide that support.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. I.R. Causley)—Does the member for Blair wish to move a motion in connection with the report to enable it to be debated on a future occasion?