Page 1944 - Week 07 - Thursday, 20 August 1992
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The Attorney and I have already covered the reasons for this amendment. There is doubt about the capacity of the DPP to act in those circumstances. I do not have in front of me the article I wrote out to explain exactly why; but it has to do with the nature of the proceedings, whether they are essentially criminal or civil. Certainly, it is a matter where the DPP might not often play a role. If there are contempt of court proceedings, it may well be that the DPP often has no role at all. But it may also be the case that, for the sake of being involved in the administration of the criminal law and of providing some level of consistency in that administration, the DPP would on occasions like to intervene. These sorts of provisions provide for his capacity to do so, and that is desirable. I commend the amendment to the house.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (4.50): Madam Speaker, as I indicated, the Government is happy to accept this. I should say that this is a good example of how you can get some sensible cooperation across the floor in this chamber. These proposals were circulated some time ago. Mr Humphries took his policy proposals to the Parliamentary Counsel and the Parliamentary Counsel drafted the amendment. It is a quite technical matter, so it was technically soundly drafted to implement the policy proposal. The Opposition discussed the matter with the Government. We took our technical advice. We then sat down and, of the two proposed amendments, agreed that one would not proceed and one would proceed. I think this is something that in this small Assembly we should strive to do.
I hope that nobody tries to make the point that the fact that the Government accepts an amendment indicates in some way that the original Bill was flawed. Rather, it indicates that the process of debate in this chamber can show that the Government is prepared to look at other areas that were not within the compass of the original policy proposal the Cabinet was looking at. In effect, Mr Humphries has picked up another issue. We have looked at it and said, "This is an appropriate vehicle to proceed with". We are happy to proceed this way throughout the life of this parliament. We hope that we do not get into point-scoring where, whenever the Government takes a sensible view and adopts an opposition proposal, it is seen as some sort of point-scoring exercise, indicating an original failure on the part of the Bill. All it really shows is that this Assembly is debating matters in a mature fashion, and we are prepared to look at sensible proposals from the Opposition on their merits.
Amendment agreed to.
Clause, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 4 agreed to.
Clause 5
MR HUMPHRIES (4.52): This is the first of the provisions I referred to in my remarks about the unnecessary nature of the amendments that take out references to the Commonwealth DPP. I read subsection 22(6) of the DPP Act, which is the subsection that is being repealed by this provision:
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