Page 3740 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 9 December 1992
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The Bill also repeals bail provisions wherever they occur in other Acts (for example, Part III of the Domestic Violence Act 1986). The object is to consolidate the law of bail into the one Act. The amendments are largely technical and do not make any substantive changes to the law which are not already proposed in the Bail Bill 1992.
Further, on page 8 of the explanatory memorandum:
Part III of the Act, which provides for bail for those charged with domestic violence offences, will be repealed. The provisions which require special notice to be given to those under the protection of the Act appear in the Bail Bill 1992. The repeal of Part III will not affect any substantive rights given under the Act.
The committee has not to date researched all Acts which are impinged upon by new legislation such as the Bail Act. If the committee had taken this approach, it is likely that the oversight would have been detected and many more hours of work by Professor Whalan would have been involved.
It seems to me, Madam Speaker, that this matter referred to by the Attorney-General currently falls outside the committee's terms of reference, and therefore the comments of the Attorney-General in the Canberra Times appear to be inappropriate. I believe that this Assembly needs to address the question of whether the Standing Committee on Scrutiny of Bills and Subordinate Legislation should take a comprehensive approach to examining all legislation affected by proposed new Bills or whether we should not. I urge all members to carefully examine this matter. It may well be that the terms of reference of the Scrutiny of Bills and Subordinate Legislation Committee need amending to clarify the situation regarding these circumstances.
MR HUMPHRIES (4.25): Madam Speaker, I would also like to comment on the report. There is considerable concern in the Scrutiny of Bills Committee about this matter, because it exhibits a difference of view between how the Government sees the role of this committee and how the committee sees itself. I am anxious to sort it out, not because I want to generate some spunky headlines - a sort of committee attack - - -
Mr Connolly: Of course that is why you are doing it. We have discussed this on several occasions. This is playing politics.
MR HUMPHRIES: The Minister has been in politics too long. He is really far too cynical about this. I do not know how to put it to him in a plainer way. I did not go to the meeting in the first place and try to create a headline. It was you, Minister, who first spoke to the media about what happened with that matter. It is not my intention - and I am sure I speak for other members of the committee - to bang the Government's head against the wall about this matter.
The Minister looks cynically across the chamber. Whether you want to believe it or not, it is my intention to try to sort out where this committee goes and how this committee does its work in future. That is why the committee invited the Minister to come to the committee meeting last night - to talk to him in the hope that we might be able to sort the matter out behind closed doors. I regret to say that we could not. That is why we want to talk about it here on the floor of the Assembly, because we have to put on record that we take a different view of the matter to the view which has been put in the media by the Minister.
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