Page 3091 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 10 September 1991
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Mr Collaery, in some of his advice to new Attorneys, suggested that perhaps I should examine omnibus Bills and rolling many Bills into one, and he referred me to an article in the Australian Law Journal or the Australian Law News of recent months. In fact, I recall giving advice to old Attorneys when I was in opposition last year - I think it was in relation to the debate on the Motor Traffic (Amendment) Bill No. 6, 7, 8 or 47; it was hard to keep track - that perhaps we could look more often at reducing the number of Bills introduced, to save the attendant printing costs.
These Bills, of course, as we acknowledged in the introduction speech, were Bills that had been brought forward to a very advanced stage by the former Government, and we said that we were putting them through the appropriate procedure of endorsement by an incoming government - putting our seal of approval on them, so to speak. I did not think that it was appropriate to go to the additional effort of redrafting them and the attendant cost or, in fact, waste of resources.
But the point that Mr Collaery makes now, like the point that I made last year, is well made. There is a significant cost associated with each individual Bill that is printed. There is a significant cost in terms of the delay in getting additional legislation on the books and the attendant inconvenience to practitioners as people have to go through the legislation when finding the law for citizens. Although the ACT will be in a quite advanced state when we get our computerised database for legislation in operation - so that the community and legal advisers in particular will have more accurate and up-to-date access to the current state of the law - there is significant advantage in rolling multiple small amendments into single Bills.
I can assure the Assembly that, in the lifetime of this and successive Labor governments, which will be elected under single member electorates, we will be very conscious of the need to achieve this. And we will probably be seeing less legislation. The Commonwealth used to adopt the practice, which I think was quite appropriate, of listing consequential amendments by schedule at the end of Acts. For some reason it has departed from that and I think that, again following a departure in Commonwealth practice in recent years which has been picked up in the Territories, we have adopted the practice of having the Wheatseed (Amendment) Bill and the Wheatseed (Consequential Amendments) (Amendment) Bill.
I think it is somewhat unnecessary to have a consequential amendments Bill as a piece of legislation additional to and separate from a principal Bill, or even a Bill amending a principal Act. It is certainly not beyond the ability of drafters and legislators to rein that in somewhat. Mr Collaery's suggestion of omnibus measures is well made and I can assure the Assembly that it is under active
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