Page 5046 - Week 17 - Wednesday, 12 December 1990
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Ms Follett: That is why we have the Scrutiny of Bills Committee.
MR COLLAERY: I am coming to that. These Bills can be fraught with error and they can be outside the legislative power of the Assembly. Mr Speaker, the Lakes (Amendment) Bill is a cautionary tale. It is a cautionary tale of which all members should take heed. Mr Speaker, here we have an Opposition that has put down cosmetic Bills to embarrass our human rights machinery and to embarrass hardworking law officers with the implication that they also were as slow as the Government, and here is a lesson - - -
Members interjected.
MR COLLAERY: It is, Mr Speaker, a cautionary tale. I remind members that when the Leader of the Opposition introduced the Bill she said that she did it at the request of the Canberra Yacht Club. The Bill had the very best of motives, and I want to make that clear for the record. It was intended to fix up the collision rules applicable to sailing boats on the lake. If the Leader of the Opposition had had the Legislative Counsel draft the Bill, he would have told her that her proposed Bill could not achieve her desired ends. It would have taken five minutes - and even my colleague Mr Jensen picked it immediately - to tell her that, unfortunately, the Bill does not apply to the national land areas on Lake Burley Griffin.
Mr Speaker, at the conclusion of my address I will table an opinion prepared by my Law Office which considered the efficacy of the Lakes (Amendment) Bill. I do not run a quarantined Law Office. I am quite prepared to give briefings to members of the Opposition, which is more than they did when they were in government and other members and I were on the other side of the house. Be that as it may; I am quite prepared to do it, but this Opposition wants to play trick Bills on us to embarrass us. It has done it. It has not proceeded with some of those trick Bills, but it went and got the limelight for them and issued documentation in the community effectively to mislead the media.
Mr Speaker, that opinion that I am referring to indicates that the Bill does not make changes to the law in respect of Lake Burley Griffin, and if the Bill were to proceed different legal regimes would come into existence on different lakes in the Territory. It may not be possible to apply the changes proposed in the Bill to Lake Burley Griffin by Territory legislation. Instead of fixing the rules on the lake, Ms Follett's Bill would confound what rules already exist.
Mr Connolly: Nonsense! We have territorial jurisdiction throughout the ACT. This is bizarre.
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