Page 4710 - Week 15 - Thursday, 21 November 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
MR WOOD: The Assembly will not meet by 1 March; so I am not sure what the benefit would be. Why have this up and running before the new Assembly is also up and running? It does not seem to make sense to me - not that the two have to be timed for the same occasion. I think that, at the very most, some time after the commencement of the new Assembly would be a better proposition. Really, to impose this matter on us I think is impossible. Are you speaking, Mr Jensen?
Mr Jensen: I will have a quick chat, yes.
MR WOOD: All right. Well, I would ask for your support and the support of your group on this very sensible opposition to this extraordinarily early commencement date.
MR JENSEN (5.29): There are a couple of issues related to this, I think, and they relate to the ability to bring in a proper and appropriate appeal system, which we do not have at the moment. That is one of the reasons why the Rally proposed some amendments to the interim planning legislation, which we expected would be long gone by now. We expected that this legislation would be up and running; but, of course, circumstances prevented that from actually taking place.
I suppose the point that I am really trying to make in this matter is that if Mr Wood seeks to have this legislation commence on 1 July, as is currently proposed, I think some changes will have to be made to the Interim Planning Act. On that basis I would seek some sort of indication of support from the Minister in relation to the Interim Planning Act amendments tabled in this place by the Rally, particularly in relation to the disallowance provisions.
It is quite possible to go through this legislation and make it operate on 1 January, and that would be by dealing with some of the areas where it refers to the "Plan" here. I refer, for example, to clause 113, where it says:
Where a defined decision is of a class prescribed by the Plan, the relevant Minister shall, within the period ...
There are ways, of course, whereby that can be done. I think members of this place and members of the bureaucracy are well aware of my views in relation to the use of regulations as opposed to schedules for this sort of thing. It would be quite possible to provide, as an amendment to this legislation, a schedule and to say: "Where a defined decision is of a class prescribed by the schedule X, Y, Z, the relevant Minister shall", et cetera. That, of course, is my preference and the preference of the Rally for that issue. So, it would be quite possible, if we wanted this legislation to commence on 1 January, to move that particular amendment. That was the process that the Rally was working towards in the drafting and preparation of its various amendments.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .