Page 5357 - Week 17 - Tuesday, 3 December 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
stuff on proposed amendments to this Bill to make its operation more and more restrictive, more and more complex, more and more difficult in terms of the Government and everybody else getting on with their business. I would have agreed to the original proposition that Mr Jensen put forward. It was a simple, one-paragraph statement which said, in essence, that the authority, having revised a draft plan variation, should tell everybody, through the Gazette and the newspaper, that it had done it.
I had no difficulty with that - none whatsoever. Then, yesterday, I got epistle No. 2. That expanded that simple statement so that it comprised subclause (6), paragraphs (a) and (b), and also subclause (7). Today we get dropped on us a comprehensive proposed subclause (8) that would require the authority not only to place a notification in the Gazette and the newspaper but also to write letters to everybody.
Mr Connolly: Knock on everyone's door.
MR KAINE: Yes. I am a bit surprised that they did not say "to be served by hand". That would have made sure that everybody knew - and then maybe they should have prescribed that when they knocked on the door they needed an identification card from the person who answered the door so that we knew that the person getting the notice was, in fact, the person who had put in the submission in the first place.
I think it goes right over the top. I think it is a classic example of people trying to write into the law such prescriptive material that it really makes the law inoperative and impractical in the long run. The legislation becomes so full of this kind of prescriptive material that it binds public servants to all of this administrative trivia which, in fact, is quite unnecessary.
I am quite certain that people who had enough interest in a matter in the first place to put in a submission to the Planning Authority will be keeping watch on what happens. They will know what happens. Certainly, a notice in the Gazette and in a daily newspaper ought to be sufficient to inform them. So, I am afraid that Mr Jensen lost me. I would have accepted his first proposition. But he has now expanded it to such a degree that, quite frankly, it has become unacceptable to me. Unless he can convince me that I should buy all this stuff, I am afraid that I will have to reject it. On the other hand, if he is prepared to go back and move his original amendment, then he will get my support.
Mr Jensen: Mr Speaker, on a point of clarification: There are actually two amendments. I said at the time that the proposal was that we would deal with my amendment No. 19 as printed and that I would then, in fact, move a separate
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .