Page 6062 - Week 18 - Thursday, 12 December 1991
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however many people might be on its payroll. We could be talking here about some dozens or even hundreds of people. It is therefore important that individuals, or companies, that seek to get licences under the legislation know clearly, and without ambiguity, what conditions they must satisfy in order to be able to obtain a licence.
Subclause 14(1) gives them, up to a point, those clear indications. It says that the applicant must have "satisfactorily completed an approved course or an approved examination". That is fair enough. Alternatively, the applicant must be "accredited under a corresponding law" of a State. That is also fair enough; it is very clear. The applicant must also not have been "convicted of an offence against this Act or a corresponding law". That provision is complemented elsewhere, where it says that the authority shall have regard to:
if the applicant is a body corporate - whether any person having the management or control of the body corporate, or the body corporate itself has been convicted of an offence against this Act or a corresponding law.
Again, that is quite clear; you either have or have not been convicted. But then it says that the applicant must be "otherwise a fit and proper person to hold the licence to which the application relates".
I think that this question should be asked: Why cannot the legislation set out what are the conditions under which a person is or is not a fit and proper person to hold a licence? They are extremely important conditions. They are conditions that a person coming before a public servant and seeking this right to earn his or her living will need to know about; yet they are not set out.
These provisions give a public servant the right to decide along these lines: "You satisfy all the criteria set out in the legislation, but I do not consider you to be a fit and proper person, and I therefore intend not to give you a licence". That is unacceptable, as far as the Liberal Party is concerned. The Alliance Government, I think, was fairly assiduous about trying to weed out such clauses in legislation, and I can certainly indicate that we took every step to ensure that there were no such provisions in legislation that came forward. We may certainly have missed some - - -
Mr Jensen: What about subclause 14(2)?
MR HUMPHRIES: I will come to subclause 14(2) in a moment, Mr Jensen. Certainly, we took efforts to remove those sorts of clauses as often as was possible. I believe that we should be no less assiduous now.
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