Page 3939 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 23 October 1990
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as I am aware, in State parliaments is that where a number of separate amendments need to be made to the one Act they are dealt with, strangely enough, in one amending Bill. For some reason this Government has decided not to do that.
Mrs Grassby made some comments last week and suggested that perhaps the Government wanted to boost its number of Bills and this was a useful ruse for boosting the Government's number of Bills. I must say I find myself in agreement with Mrs Grassby. I notice also that we have adopted the course, or this Alliance Government has adopted the course, generally speaking, of passing a consequential amendment Bill together with a substantial Bill on a number of subjects. The Director of Public Prosecutions Bill and the Director of Public Prosecutions (Consequential Provisions) Bill stand as examples.
The normal practice, I would have thought, employed on the hill is that you simply have a consequential provisions section at the end of your substantial Bill - again, a substantial saving to public revenue, not rubbish, Mr Kaine. We heard in the Estimates Committee that every time one of these is produced - and it seems a very flimsy piece of paper; we are talking about what appears to be an A4 sheet of paper printed on both sides - there is a cost of many thousands of dollars of public funds in typesetting and in printing. There is also the added disadvantage that when citizens wish to know the law they are required to look at several Acts.
Clearly, separate areas of the Minister's department would have been responsible for the policy on different areas of this Bill. But, equally clearly, there could have been some coordination. Mr Kaine said that in Mrs Grassby's period as Minister there were a number of amendments to the same Bill. Indeed, that may well be the case. I take Mr Kaine at his word on that; I will not check the Hansard transcript. That may well be the case. I make no criticism of the fact that Mr Duby made some amendments earlier this year and I would make no criticism, Mr Speaker, if Mr Duby later this year again found it necessary to make amendments to the Motor Traffic Act.
My point is that in a two-week period this Assembly has passed five Bills amending the one Act. That is clearly wasteful. It clearly would have been better if those had been coordinated and I hope that, in future, the Government will attempt to do that. Otherwise, as I remarked to some of my colleagues today when we were discussing this, when the Federal Government amends the Trade Practices Act, we could have 160 amending Bills and, heaven forbid, the number of amending Bills that could be necessary when the amendments to the Corporations Act, made necessary by the High Court case ruling certain sections invalid, are introduced up on the hill later this year or early next year. We could have 300 amending Bills amending 300 sections of the Corporations Act if this, frankly, ludicrous legislative ruse was adopted. Mr Speaker, I hope
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