Page 4000 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 9 November 1994
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Page 98, amendment of Weapons Act 1991, proposed amendment of subsection 40(6):
Omit from paragraph (a) "or by imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months, or by both".
Omit from paragraph (b) "1,000", substitute "100".
Page 103, amendment of Weapons Act 1991, proposed amendment of subsection 83(1), omit the proposed amendment, substitute the following amendment:
"Subsection 83(1) -
Add at the end the following penalty provision:
'Penalty:
(a) if the offender is a natural person - 20 penalty units;
(b) if the offender is a body corporate - 100 penalty units'.".
MR HUMPHRIES (5.14): Madam Speaker, I want to make one more general comment on the Bill at this point. It is just a comment about the explanatory memorandum. In reading these explanatory memoranda, I have always been struck by the lack of useful information contained in the section entitled "Financial Considerations", which is supposed to tell you what kind of impact the Bill will have on the budget of the Territory or maybe even on the citizens of the Territory. I have always found those provisions to be singularly non-useful, and this is no exception. In fact, this is a pretty good example of it. In the 106 pages of amendments which are contained in the Statute Law Revision (Penalties) Bill, probably four in every five are increases in the penalty - and often by fivefold or tenfold. There would have to be a massive increase in the total amount collected by the Territory from the imposing of fines under these hundreds of sections of various Acts. So, when we turn to the explanatory memorandum, we would expect to see some indication of how large the increase in revenue to the Territory might be as a result. But instead we find the statement that the Bill is intended to be budget neutral. I think it is a good example of why we should really ask ourselves whether we are achieving anything with these fairly useless financial considerations sections in explanatory memoranda.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General and Minister for Health) (5.16): Madam Speaker, by definition, as we said from the starting point, these are the sorts of provisions of the criminal law that are rarely used - including the five pounds Mining Act provision - which is why, when we change the motor traffic legislation and the other things that we look at regularly, it does have a big budget impact. We just do not know what the budget impact is in this case. I note Mr Humphries's criticism, but I think it is unfair in this case.
Amendments agreed to.
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