Page 5363 - Week 17 - Tuesday, 3 December 1991
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MR WOOD (Minister for Education and the Arts and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (12.12): Mr Speaker, I understand what Mr Moore is saying. It would be a good move, if we could do it that way, to make provision so that those who are interested in these things could know that they could catch up on these things by looking at their Saturday paper. But there are problems with it.
While it is not necessarily directly relevant to this clause - which talks about what the Authority will be doing - I have opted for consistency, because Mr Jensen has proposed amendments to require advertising on the Saturday in other parts of this Bill. The problem with specifying the Saturday is that, if your local builder, who is not always exactly spot-on in relation to procedures and the bookwork and the paperwork, happens to lodge a notice, prior to taking out some work, on a Friday, when a Saturday is specified, he has to do it again, which would slow him down.
Alternatively, we could face the prospect of him doing it on a Friday, nobody picking it up, and there being a question, subsequently, of illegality because it was not listed on the Saturday, as required in the legislation. So, there are quite severe potential problems in specifying a particular day of the week. Good though Mr Moore's suggestion is, I believe that it would create difficulties that we ought to avoid.
This clause refers particularly to the authority, and one expects that, being better organised, it would not make mistakes. But it is important to maintain that consistency, I believe, throughout the legislation. I do not believe that the good intention will work in practical circumstances. I move the following amendment to Mr Moore's amendment:
After the words "Gazette and", omit "on a Saturday".
MR MOORE (12.14): The argument presented by Mr Wood, on its face value, seems quite sensible; but I think its spuriousness can be demonstrated by turning to the definition of "newspaper" on page 3 of the Bill, line 3, which is:
"newspaper" means a newspaper published and circulating in the Territory.
One could apply exactly the same arguments to a builder who has made the mistake of putting his public notice in the Australian, which is not actually published in the Territory, or in the Chronicle, when in fact we say in this amendment "a daily newspaper".
I think that what we are looking for is consistency. It seems to me that anybody who is involved in the building industry will very quickly learn that such a provision
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