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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 11 Hansard (13 December) . . Page.. 2946 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

That clearly means that one cannot have an agreement to have a higher standard than another State. It is clearly contemplated in those words that all the States should accept and use the same food standards, unless they agree among themselves to allow differences between the jurisdictions, which is not the case in this instance. Clearly, if this legislation were to pass it would be in breach of the 1991 Food Standards Agreement signed by all States and the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory.

Mr Moore does raise an important point in this debate; that is, the way in which the Assembly as a whole interacts on national agreements. It is an important debate, because at some point we do have to face up to the question of how we engage in those national agreements in a way which allows us, as an Assembly, to come on board on such agreements. Governments tend to sign them. In some cases, governments will come back to this place and lay before the Assembly the documents that they intend to sign, or possibly have signed, and say, "This is what we want to do. Do we have your agreement?". I recall that the uniform Criminal Code was laid before the Assembly in that way for in-principle agreement by the Assembly. The Assembly gave that in-principle agreement. It is certainly preferable for that to occur.

It may be that we need to go further than that and not allow governments, particularly minority governments, which I suspect will be the flavour of the government in this Territory for some time to come, to sign agreements without approval from the Assembly beforehand; or without coming back for the ratification of that agreement, in much the same way as the US Senate ratifies treaties after the President has signed them.

In the circumstances, if we are developing that kind of policy, we need to have at least some respect for the process of signing those agreements, whatever government might be in power, and honouring those agreements as they are carried forward under succeeding governments. It would be very easy for us as a government now to say, "Forget all the agreements that the previous Government signed. They were the other mob; we are this mob; and we are not going to honour any of those agreements". That is a very dangerous practice to get into.

Mr Moore: It is also dangerous just to stay with them.

MR HUMPHRIES: We should attempt to stay with those agreements.

Mr Connolly: This is all assuming that it is breaching the national agreement.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Connolly, I think, believes that this is the way the national agreement is going to end up.

Mr Connolly: No; I just do not think that it is a breach.

MR HUMPHRIES: The National Food Authority, which administers these standards, does believe that it is a breach.

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