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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 2 Hansard (27 February) . . Page.. 581 ..

MR HIRD (continuing):

Mr Speaker, the report I have just presented details the proceedings of a conference I attended, along with the clerk of that committee, Mr Tom Duncan, and our legal adviser, from 10 to 13 February. At the outset, I place on record my thanks to the hosts of the conference, the New Zealand Parliament, and particularly to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Hon. Doug Kidd. The conference was well organised and the staff of the New Zealand Parliament are to be congratulated for the high effort that they put into making this conference the success it was. The delegates were made welcome right from the very beginning of the conference. The delegates were given a traditional Maori greeting called a powhiri which involved hakas, dancing and singing. The greeting was very colourful and will be remembered, I am sure, by all the delegates.

The conference had delegates from 11 countries, including Great Britain, South Africa and Sri Lanka, to name just a few. The full list of the delegates is contained in this report. Twelve papers were presented at the conference and they covered topics such as uses and abuses of delegated legislation, regulatory impact statements and civil rights and the role of parliament and the courts. One paper presented by the Australian Senate was entitled "Sir Humphrey Appleby is Alive and Well". At the end of the conference, following an invitation from the New Zealand Speaker, two members of the Hong Kong delegation spoke about the current situation in that colony in its lead-up to July this year, when it goes back under Chinese rule. The conference was very informative and it enabled me to make contacts and discuss with other politicians and staff from other Commonwealth countries issues related to the scrutiny of delegated legislation.

Finally, and on a lighter note, I draw members' attention to Attachment 3 of the report, which the chair of the United Kingdom committee claimed to be one of the longest sentences he has found in a piece of delegated legislation. As members will see, that one sentence goes for 23 lines. The UK chair challenged all other members of the conference to see whether they could find one that was longer. Knowing the fine work done by ACT public servants, I am sure we will not find one. I commend the report to the parliament.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

MR MOORE (4.16): Mr Speaker, I present Report No. 26 of the Standing Committee on Planning and Environment called "The Government's 1997-98 Draft Capital Works Program", together with the extracts of the minutes of proceedings. I move:

That the report be noted.

Mr Speaker, I would like to start in a very unusual way - by thanking the secretary of the committee and the members of the committee, including our very new member, Mrs Littlewood, for their work in dealing with these issues so quickly. It is only a matter of 21/2 weeks since the committee was first provided with the draft capital works program. Since then we have had two public hearings and the committee has gone through something like four lever arch files full of information to deal with capital works.

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