Page 153 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 23 February 1994
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I am fond of reminding members of the commitment that my colleague Mr Moore and I made on our election to this Assembly, and I am going to do it again this morning. We did commit ourselves to stable and accountable government. Through the mechanism of enabling members of this Assembly to amend subordinate laws, we are again ensuring greater accountability of the ACT Government through the Assembly, the parliament of the ACT. We are increasing accountability by having administrative decisions able to be reviewed by the Assembly.
My colleague Mr Moore this morning introduced into this Assembly a Statutory Appointments Bill. If passed by this Assembly, the provisions of the Statutory Appointments Bill will enable greater accountability by executive government to the parliament here in the ACT. I need not say more, Mr Deputy Speaker. I commend the Subordinate Laws (Amendment) Bill 1993 to the Assembly, and I look forward to the discussions that I will be having with, perhaps, Mr Connolly, Mr Humphries and Mr Moore on the details of the Bill.
MR STEVENSON (11.25): This Bill is a practical measure that we can expect to increase the quality of legislation and accountability of the Government. For that reason, I support it, along with the other members. There is one point that I would raise and that Ms Szuty mentioned also. She said that it is good to see a private members Bill moving through so quickly. She used the words "very quickly". I would agree that nine weeks is very quick. It is encouraging to know that at least Ms Szuty will support me when I again move to require a minimum of 60 days, which is even more quickly than this current "very quickly" Bill, for a Bill to sit on the table so that people in Canberra at least can have a very quick look at laws before they are passed. They have no chance whatsoever when they are passed within a few days or a couple of weeks or so.
MR MOORE (11.26), in reply: Mr Deputy Speaker, it is with pleasure that I rise. This is one side of the Assembly that people often do not see when legislation comes through. It happens, as we are all well aware, very regularly when there is a cooperative approach to a piece of legislation. Mr Connolly mentioned his concern over the ramifications of financial constraint that we have already over legislation as private members, and how to apply that to this Bill. I feel very comfortable about further negotiations with him. We will inform all members and try to arrange an appropriate time so that members who are interested can be involved in that discussion and so that we can work that out in a sensible and reasonable way.
It is with some pride, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I accept the support for this piece of legislation which moves away from the circuitous route that Mr Connolly referred to earlier whereby we could achieve this sort of goal. It flows from a piece of legislation that I tabled dealing with insulation in houses - something that really ought to have been done by regulation. That drew the attention of Professor Whalan in his work for the Scrutiny of Bills Committee. He said that he was delighted because he had finally come across a piece of legislation that he refers to as Henry VIII legislation; legislation that makes a change and then gives power back to an Executive to undo that, should it so wish. That matter should have been dealt with by regulation rather than by legislation and we ought to have been able to modify it by regulation.
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