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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 3 Hansard (9 April) . . Page.. 738 ..

MR BERRY (10.42): Mr Speaker, I present the Health and Community Care Services (Validation of Fees and Charges) Bill 1997, together with its explanatory memorandum.

Title read by Clerk.

MR BERRY: I move:

That this Bill be agreed to in principle.

This Bill will, as its long title sets out, remove any doubts about the validity of two determinations made under the Health and Community Care Services Act 1996. The saga goes back over most of the last year and highlights the total inadequacy of Mrs Carnell's management of her health portfolio. It is littered with mistakes. Dozens upon dozens of charges set by determinations of the Health Minister under the Health Act are at risk. There is something like a dozen pages of health determinations which this Health Minister, through the inadequacy of her management, has put at risk. It becomes necessary, therefore, for the voice of sanity to emerge in this place, to move to fix the problem ,since the Chief Minister has adopted such an arrogant disregard for her obligations under the relevant legislation.

Let us have a look at the events that preceded this. First of all, Mrs Carnell issued two determinations - determinations Nos 106 and 136 - to have effect from 1 July 1996. The Scrutiny of Bills Committee raised questions about the validity of those documents in its Report No. 10 of 24 July last year. So, this issue has some form. The Government agreed that those determinations were invalid. If the Chief Minister had had any courage at that point she would have come in here and said, "There has been an administrative mistake". If she had placed a Bill before the house so that we could have discussed the question of retrospectivity, the process could have been sorted out quite some time ago. But no. What did Mrs Carnell do? She tried to cover it up with another determination which attempted to give retrospective effect to dozens upon dozens of fees and charges.

Mr Speaker, loss of face became the issue here. Mrs Carnell did not have the courage to come in and say that somebody had made a mistake. Rather, to the contrary, she has moved to entrench the mistake. That retrospective regulation to which I referred, determination No. 227, has now been drawn into serious question because of the provisions of the Subordinate Laws Act. And not only determination No. 227 - this is where the whole situation becomes laughable, and this joke of a Chief Minister has demonstrated her inability to deal with these issues - but also determination No. 240, gazetted only two weeks later. Mistake after mistake!

The Subordinate Laws Act makes it pretty clear. Section 7 of the Act states:

A subordinate law shall not be expressed to take effect from a date before the date of its notification in the Gazette where, if the law so took effect -

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