Page 553 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 19 May 1992

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MILK AUTHORITY (AMENDMENT) BILL 1992

A.C.T. INSTITUTE OF TECHNICAL AND FURTHER EDUCATION
(AMENDMENT) BILL 1992

CANBERRA THEATRE TRUST (AMENDMENT) BILL 1992

LEGAL AID (AMENDMENT) BILL 1992

NATIONAL EXHIBITION CENTRE TRUST (AMENDMENT) BILL 1992

LONG SERVICE LEAVE (BUILDING AND CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY)
(AMENDMENT) BILL 1992

TEACHING SERVICE (AMENDMENT) BILL 1992

FIRE BRIGADE (ADMINISTRATION) (AMENDMENT) BILL 1992

ELECTRICITY AND WATER (AMENDMENT) BILL (NO. 2) 1992

CEMETERIES (AMENDMENT) BILL 1992

Debate resumed from 9 April 1992, on motion by Mr Connolly:

That these Bills be agreed to in principle.

MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (4.08): One might suppose from the fact that these several Bills have been linked together for cognate debate and looking at the proposed amendments to the original Acts that these amendments are perhaps not of very great importance. That could not be further from the truth because these amendments extend, in a practical way, the provisions of the Alliance Government's Discrimination Act to statutory bodies to which the Discrimination Act in its present form does not apply. The effect is that those provisions of the law which relate to the ACT public sector under section 22B and section 33 of the Public Service Act 1922 are, by these amendments, extended into our statutory bodies. So, they really are matters of great import, just as was the introduction by the Alliance Government of the discrimination legislation.

These amendments all provide benchmarks for certain required procedures. They all require guidelines to be established as soon as practicable, whatever that means, and within 12 months from the commencement of the relevant Acts. They also require the relevant agencies to provide details of the program to the Head of the ACT Administration and to take any action necessary to give effect to EEO programs within their organisations.

The Bills, although prima facie the same, are in fact not the same, because they seem to be tailored to the nature and the size of the agency or authority to which they refer. Obviously, the obligations that you are going to impose on a small organisation and the way that they are put into effect will be totally different from the way that they are done in a larger organisation. For example, you have the two extremes of the Cemetery Trust on the one hand and the ACT Electricity and Water Authority on the other. Obviously, they are organisations of vastly different orders of magnitude.

I have adverted to the fact that this is really a projection of the Alliance Government's Discrimination Act, and that is a reflection of the importance that the Liberal Party places on questions of discrimination and equal opportunity. This is not new. While in government, I think we had a very good record of implementing anti-discrimination and equal opportunity provisions - for example, in connection with the ageing, people of ethnic backgrounds, people who are disabled mentally or physically, and to give women their rightful place in this society.