Page 2052 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 28 May 1991
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Mr Deputy Speaker, as Attorney I am proud to table this paper and to report that the Law Office is willing to reflect on current practices which have become comfortable over time. Training will be required, but lawyers are obliged to constantly update their skills and knowledge and I am sure that the Law Office will approach this with enthusiasm. In relation to the problem of accessibility, the discussion paper canvasses the option of having an annual volume of explanatory memoranda published. This volume could be available in public libraries for reference and be available for sale generally. This option obviously has many advantages and I would expect favourable comment on this proposal.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I have circulated the discussion paper to the Law Society, the Bar Association, Professor Doug Whalan, Mr Kelly, chairman of the Community Law Reform Committee, the Chief Justice and the Chief Magistrate. I will also make it available to the public and I look forward with interest to comments from members. I make a particular statement in gratitude to the staff of the Law Office who put together this paper and have shown such enthusiasm for the project. I present the following papers:
Explanatory memoranda -
Discussion paper.
Ministerial statement, 28 May 1991.
I move:
That the Assembly takes note of the papers.
MR CONNOLLY (4.11): Mr Deputy Speaker, I will make some brief remarks now rather than adjourning this matter. I say immediately that the Opposition wholeheartedly welcomes this initiative and I congratulate the Attorney on taking this step. I am sure that if his flu was not so bad his speech which conveyed enthusiasm would have conveyed it more personally. I express some sympathy for that.
Mr Deputy Speaker, the law in Australia went through a dramatic change in the early 1980s after much debate as to whether or not, in construing the words of the parliament as expressed in an Act of parliament, you could look beyond the Act to extrinsic aids; whether you could look beyond what was said in the Act to what was said in the parliament, what was said in the explanatory memorandum or what was said in reports that presaged legislation.
After much debate the law was amended to allow courts to have recourse to materials such as explanatory memoranda; but the experience of anyone who is in legal practice, either in preparing opinions or in arguing a matter before a court or tribunal, is almost uniformly that, when you go to the explanatory memoranda for background or for additional information on what a particularly ambiguous phrase means, more often than not the explanatory
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