Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 11 Hansard (14 December) . . Page.. 3161 ..

1 of 3

Mr Speaker

I move that this Bill be agreed to in principle.

In 1993 this Assembly reacted to the many objections to the sight of a group of children involved in a boxing tent at the Royal Canberra Show by passing the Boxing Control Act 1993.

The Amendment Bill that I am presenting today is necessary to improve administrative efficiency, and to alleviate any confusion in the granting of approvals to conduct fistboxing and kickboxing contests in the ACT.

Currently, as Minister responsible for Sport in the ACT, I must approve each individual contest, and must table in the Assembly a "Code of Practice" as a disallowable instrument for each and every contest.

Assembly sitting patterns, combined with the nature of affected organisations, have resulted in this system becoming operationally inefficient.

Organisations conducting boxing contests, often through no fault of their own, are on many occasions not able to submit applications in sufficient time to allow for all approval and tabling processes as required by the Act.

This has created a situation where I am required to decide that the contest cannot take place, or, as has occurred on a number of occasions, to use the regulatory powers of the Act to allow the contest to take place without meeting all of the other requirements of the Act. Previous Ministers have also used this strategy.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .