Page 2750 - Week 09 - Thursday, 26 August 1993
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I would like to thank Tom Duncan, who put the report together. Tom is wonderful on our committee, and I am grateful for the work he does. I also thank Beth Irvin, who is also on our committee staff but was not with us in Melbourne. Tom was very grateful that the conference was sitting at that time because he was able to go off to the football match on Friday night and sit in the pouring rain with the Canadians. They did not understand Australian rules at all, but they seemed to enjoy it and they got a good laugh out of it, I think.
I would also like to thank Helen for accompanying me. Both Helen and I got a considerable amount out of this conference. I recommend to other committees that they attend when things such as this come up. It is very important to talk to other States about the way things are being done. Both Helen and I got a chance to talk to a lot of people about how things are done in other areas, and it was worth while. We spent all the time at the conference and at the workshops. There were some very good papers given at the conference, and both of us came back with reams and reams of paper. Even though we heard most of those papers delivered, it is only when you start going through the papers and reading over them again that you realise that some of the knowledge you pick up is very helpful in this house.
As we all know, the New South Wales Parliament is a very old parliament, as is the Victorian Parliament, and the others have been around for a long time. Although they can teach us a lot, I think we can teach them a lot by not making the mistakes they have made. By learning from them, we can avoid making those mistakes in this house, thus making it a far better house. I thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for not interjecting on this speech as you did before, and I appreciate the Opposition's not doing so.
MS SZUTY (12.14): I wish to comment briefly on the conference I attended in Melbourne. I will not comment on the resolutions particularly, because Mrs Grassby has covered those already. I appreciated the opportunity to attend the conference. It was unfortunate, in a way, although perhaps Mr Humphries will disagree, that he was on his honeymoon at the time the conference was held. Certainly Mrs Grassby and I got a lot out of the proceedings in Melbourne. It is interesting to note that this is a report on the Fourth Australasian and Pacific Conference on Delegated Legislation and, importantly, the First Australasian and Pacific Conference on the Scrutiny of Bills. I think that says that parliaments around Australia are coming more and more to look at the scrutiny of Bills as being an important function for the various committees of parliaments around Australia.
I have been a member of the Scrutiny of Bills Committee of this Assembly since March 1992. The process for us has been very much one of scrutinising each piece of legislation, subordinate legislation and determination as it comes before our committee. The conference particularly enabled me to concentrate on the more general issues involved in scrutiny per se, and for this reason the conference was very beneficial. The report of the conference proceedings is extremely informative and very detailed, and I add my compliments to Mr Tom Duncan, the secretary of our committee, who has put this very informative report together. I would urge members who are interested in this area to read the account of the proceedings in Melbourne because I think it gives us a very clear understanding of the various issues that were presented at the conference.
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