Page 3741 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 9 December 1992
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Madam Speaker, the problem occurs with the Bail Act, as Ms Szuty indicated. What I think we all acknowledge is that a flaw in the Bail Act has been identified in the last couple of weeks. When the legislation was before the Assembly the flaw was not spotted, as the Minister pointed out in the media, by the Government, by the Opposition or by the Scrutiny of Bills Committee. As the shadow Attorney-General, I am perfectly prepared to wear some of the blame for the fact that this particular matter was not picked up by me - mea culpa. The Government has accepted some blame as well. That is also a matter that the Minister has already made comment on. He accepts some blame as well. But I do not believe that it is up to me or to the Minister, or to any other individual, to bestow blame on the Scrutiny of Bills Committee while the terms of reference of that committee do not provide any reasonable basis on which one could say that it ought to have picked up a problem of this kind. I do not know of any term of reference that says that. The Minister had better find it, because certainly no member of the committee can find it.
Madam Speaker, I have to say again that this is not about apportioning blame or about pointing a finger. I want to put on record that the committee has found Mr Connolly a very cooperative Minister to date. He is a Minister who is prepared to talk about the issues that the committee has raised and either admit that there has been some problem and have his department rectify it or put the department's view as to why it should not be changed. It has been a very open and cooperative approach and we have much appreciated that.
Mr Wood: And he has put you right on many occasions.
MR HUMPHRIES: Indeed, he has put us right on many occasions. I freely concede that. But on this matter I think that we have a difference of view which ought to be properly aired and sorted out.
Mr Berry: You are just being a bit precious. That is what I think.
MR HUMPHRIES: The whole committee felt concerned about it, to begin with, Mr Berry. The whole committee - all three members of the committee - agreed that this matter should be discussed here today on the floor of the Assembly. Madam Speaker, we have to be crystal clear about what the role of the committee is. There are two bases for concern about this particular matter. Either the explanatory memoranda to the Bail Bill and the Bail (Consequential Amendments) Bill did not clearly state what the Bail Bill was all about and arguably misled as to what the Bill was about or, it is argued, the Scrutiny of Bills Committee ought to have picked up a policy change, or a quasi policy change, that was occurring with the Bill and made comment on it. As far as the first matter is concerned, I think we can certainly agree that the committee might well have been at fault. Professor Whalan has already acknowledged that. He said that that was a reasonable argument to mount.
Mr Connolly: So, what is the big deal?
MR HUMPHRIES: The big deal is that the Minister himself acknowledges that he had not read the explanatory memorandum when he made the comment about the Scrutiny of Bills Committee. He did not rest his case on that. He rested it on the fact that he saw the committee as having an intrinsic jurisdiction to pick up what I would call policy matters and to identify problems of this kind with Bills. That is the crux of the matter.
Debate interrupted.
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