Page 2544 - Week 08 - Thursday, 19 August 1993
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My bottom line, Madam Speaker, is that there are clearly questions about this Bill yet to be answered. I raised them. I gave the Chief Minister the opportunity to deal with them by way of amendment before we got to this stage of the debate. She declined to do so. The Bill is clearly going to go through. The Government wants it; the Government is going to have it. I support Ms Szuty. I would require, and if necessary at some future time I will put to this Assembly a motion to require, that the Government review the operations of this Bill within a reasonable time to see whether the matters that are the subject of my objections are causing any problem.
Debate interrupted.
ADJOURNMENT
MADAM SPEAKER: It being 4.30 pm, I propose the question:
That the Assembly do now adjourn.
Mr Berry: Madam Speaker, I require that the question be put forthwith without debate.
Question resolved in the negative.
GAMING MACHINE (AMENDMENT) BILL 1993
Debate resumed.
MS FOLLETT (Chief Minister and Treasurer): Madam Speaker, I ask for leave to make a short response to Mr Kaine's points.
Leave granted.
MS FOLLETT: Thank you, members. Madam Speaker, to answer Mr Kaine's last point and the point also made by Ms Szuty on the general need to review legislation, I can assure the members that legislation is kept under constant review and where a piece of legislation is proving difficult to implement or otherwise presents a problem, either to the people whom it is intended to apply to or to those with responsibility for policing or implementing it, then we will certainly make changes to it. That is not a problem. It is a process which we constantly carry out. Members will be aware of a great many amendments of a fairly minor or technical nature that constantly come to the chamber, all aimed at making legislation better and easier to implement.
Madam Speaker, Mr Kaine raised the question of the single fee in relation to licences. I find his comments rather strange. I would have thought it was quite obvious that to charge one fee is administratively more simple and certainly easier on the fee payer than to charge a multitude of fees for different types of transactions. I am aware that in, for example, moving to the payment of land tax by instalments members opposite were not happy with the fact that the Government felt that it had to charge a fee to cover four payments because of the administrative burden that those four payments involved over and above the burden that would have been involved by one single payment. I think Mr Kaine has perhaps not been quite as consistent as he might have been.
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