Page 3647 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 16 October 1990
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on an annual basis. That would avoid the problem that occurs every 10 or 15 years of looking at an Act that perhaps has not been the subject of much attention and finding that the penalties in fact bear no relationship to reality.
At the time that we made these suggestions as to penalties, the Government gave an undertaking that, rather than deal with the amendments that we had proposed to the house, it would take the Bills away, look at them more carefully and attempt to come up with a better way of drafting to include those penalty provisions. I am pleased that in doing that the Government has also taken the opportunity to further improve these old Bills by way of, for example, removing sexist language which, not surprisingly, we find the draftspersons in 1900, 1902 and 1906 employing. It generally has further improved the Bills. As a result, those original May amending Bills were withdrawn and we have these three replacement Bills before the house.
Mr Speaker, the comments that we made at the time from the Opposition in relation to the substance of the Bills essentially remain. They each relate to an important aspect of consumer protection law that is not often litigated and not often brought before the courts but provides the basic ground rules in relation to provisions in respect of pawnbrokers and second-hand dealers. The Truck (Amendment) Bill - it is very misleadingly titled, one would think - simply provides and essentially provides that persons can be paid wages only by way of money rather than in kind. I take it that that is from the second meaning of the term "truck", which is to deal or have dealings in a matter. It presumably was intended to redress the real problem in turn of the century Australia, particularly in the rural industry, of squatters or mining companies paying their rural labourers partly in cash and partly in tokens to be redeemed either at a station store or at the mining company store - a very effective method of keeping a labour force under control and underpaying and cheating workers.
The Truck (Amendment) Bill tidies up that law. It is a law that you would think is hardly likely to have application in late twentieth century Canberra; nevertheless, it is an important provision to outlaw a potentially unfair and predatory form of paying employees. Mr Speaker, the substance of the Bills is supported by the Opposition and was supported in their original form. They have been improved, and we wish them a speedy passage.
MR STEFANIAK (4.14): Mr Speaker, I am not going to delay proceedings very long. I merely rise to concur with my learned friends, the Attorney-General and Mr Connolly.
MR COLLAERY (Attorney-General) (4.15), in reply: This is a somewhat historic day, Mr Speaker, because, if I recall, these Bills represented Mr Connolly's first contribution as a lawyer in this Assembly. It was a good contribution, a
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