Page 1092 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 23 June 1992
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We are told in the Bill that the AFIC Code set out in section 21 of the AFIC Act, as in force for the time being, applies as a law of the Territory and may be referred to as the AFIC (ACT) Code. Well, that is all very nice. If you have time to read it, it is in there - a great deal of information. But it says that section 39 of the AFIC Code set out in section 21 of the AFIC Act does not apply as a law of the Territory. If you go to section 39 of the AFIC Code, it talks about the effect of incorporation on certain bodies. I would think that is a fairly esoteric matter. It says:
On notice of the issuing of a certificate of incorporation being given under section 37(1)(a) ... the company is taken to be incorporated under this Code ...
It goes on:
... the property of the company vests in the new body incorporated under this Code ... the debts and liabilities of the company become the debts and liabilities of the new body.
What on earth does it all mean? If this is good for uniform legislation right across Australia - presumably New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and the rest of them are picking all this up - why are we excluding section 39, in particular, of the code from ACT law?
Mr Berry: If you cannot cope, move to adjourn it until Thursday.
MR KAINE: Mr Berry may know. He is like Mr Connolly. He no doubt has had a long time to examine this matter. It has been before the Government, obviously, for a long time. But I do not know, and the Chief Minister did not tell me in her explanatory notes. The explanatory notes, as usual, are fairly brief. Her speech does not even advert to these matters. So I am having great difficulty, quite frankly, with the proposition that I should endorse this today without really understanding what it does.
Mr Berry: Take it over until Thursday and then you will understand it.
MR KAINE: If we defer this until Thursday and then you declare a number of other Bills urgent, as you said you are going to, we are not going to get time to debate it on Thursday. Yet we are told that this law has to be in place by 1 July. Presumably you are going to declare this urgent as well. If you are not, I do not know how you are going to get it through this chamber.
Mr Berry: If you do not want to deal with it today, do it on Thursday.
MR KAINE: We are right at the crunch point that Mr Stevenson was referring to. Everything is urgent. You had three months after you took government and you produced nothing. Now everything is urgent and we are supposed to deal with it overnight. I think that is unfair; it is unreasonable and you do no service to the community. I would remind you, Mr Berry and Mr Connolly, that the Executive did not cease to exist over the hiatus of the election and afterwards. The rest of us were not here, but you were here. You very smartly made it clear that you were not going to step down from your Executive role. Why did you not do something? Why did you leave it for three months before you started putting some of this stuff on the agenda? Quite frankly, I am appalled.
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