Page 2958 - Week 11 - Thursday, 22 October 1992
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In Australia, and in Canberra, we have too many laws. If you look on a library shelf at the number of laws since Federation or since statehood in different States, you find that for the early years there are very small amounts of legislation. It would be contained very easily in one volume. Now the situation has changed dramatically. The thickness of the laws has increased greatly. I spoke on this at a public meeting not so long ago. I had one Act and two Bills that I was using as illustrations. I also had a copy of the Constitution. Before I went to speak I had a look at the sizes of the two Bills and the one Act, and the Constitution. In each case the two Bills that were being passed and the Act that had been passed through this Assembly were longer than the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act. I had picked those Bills not because they were long but simply because they mentioned things that I was referring to.
We have too many laws that are too long and that you cannot understand. There are any number of statements made by learned people, including judges, that not even corporate lawyers can understand some of this stuff. I well remember a case where Geoffrey de Q. Walker, I believe, was asked by John Howard to explain what a clause within a Bill meant. Geoffrey decided that it was a little bit convoluted and that he would talk to the person who drafted it. When he did that, he found that they did not understand it either. That is not news to me, because I have found the same thing. You may not get as ready an acknowledgment from someone perceived by lawyers to be a layman, but it might make a difference if that someone is the Dean of Law in the Law Faculty at Queensland University. It would be far harder to say to such a person that what they were saying was not correct. I suffer from the problem that I do not always get acknowledgment from lawyers involved in this area in the ACT.
We also have the problem of some departments taking unconscionable and unreasonable actions. There are departments, I feel, that might do things like this. One is the Taxation Office, which has said that it will not allow deductions for particular expenditures. The person concerned had to go to court and fight for the allowance, which then was granted by the court. There are many cases, I grant you, where people do the wrong thing and need to be taken to task; but, equally, there are many cases - I do not believe that anyone would say that there are not - where the conduct of a department is unconscionable and unreasonable and is putting someone to unnecessary expense.
One example that I am aware of highlights the need for a change in what is looked upon as the judiciary in the Family Court. I know of a couple who married and some short time later separated. Gary looks at me with a quizzical look on his face. I can assure Mr Humphries that I do not say this as some sort of a warning. The couple separated a short time after they were married because the wife was severely mentally depressed. The wife took the young baby. The husband found out from various sources that the wife was using the child, together with lesbian women that she knew, for sexual purposes. It is a tragic case. It has been written up in the Australian newspaper on two occasions. I have seen a 44-page document that outlined the whole incredible story. This saga went on for six years. The man involved contacted over 2,500 people and organisations to try to seek justice. These organisations included members of parliament; they included social - - -
Mr Lamont: Like you.
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