Page 1710 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 30 April 1991
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reform in the ACT is really not an issue of high priority and tends to sit on the back-burner unless there is a desire, for whatever reason, to use the ACT as some sort of pacesetter for proposals for national legislation.
The Opposition would certainly agree with the proposition that it is undesirable as a matter of principle for a Commonwealth government to be, post-self-government, in effect, overruling this parliament and unilaterally imposing new legislative change in this Territory. Legislative change for this Territory is clearly a matter for this parliament, and it is to be hoped that we can continue the process with the assistance of this committee.
Mr Speaker, the thrust of this report is again a short, sharp report leading to a short, sharp draft piece of legislation which can, I think, be fairly quickly passed by this chamber. It is true that this had its genesis in a Commonwealth Law Reform Commission report, a major study on occupier's liability that was handed down in 1988. To some extent the ground changed under that commission, because the High Court in Australian Safeway Stores v. Zaluzna in 1987 pretty well restated the law of occupier's liability, and by and large removed the fairly difficult distinction between invitees, licensees and trespassers that has been drummed into generations of law students in Australia and other parts of the common law world.
It basically said that the common law general principles of negligence ought to apply to occupier's liability cases as to other cases; that is, that one has a duty of care to prevent foreseeable harm to a neighbour - the principle laid down in Donaghue v. Stevenson, the snail in a bottle case. It is interesting that the law of torts develops through the case by case common law process, but leading cases often have bizarre sets of facts. The general principle of negligence, the principle that you owe a duty of care to your neighbour, was laid down, as any law student would tell you, in Donaghue v. Stevenson. Donaghue v. Stevenson was about a Scottish woman enjoying a glass of ginger beer on a hot Scottish afternoon - probably by our standards a fairly mild or torpid afternoon. It was a glass of ginger beer from a bottle that was opaque. She enjoyed one glass and then went to enjoy the remainder of the bottle of ginger beer - - -
MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Connolly, relevance.
Debate interrupted.
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