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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 9 Hansard (2 September) . . Page.. 2721 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

Mr Moore is perhaps seeing some phantoms that do not exist. His principal objection to the Bill seems to be that it focuses on the question of whether a determination of a Minister ought to be disallowable or whether it ought not to be. What we have tried to do here is strike a balance between disallowability and the ability of this Assembly to determine, right here and now, in terms of the Act itself, what should be done in the future.

There has been some emphasis in recent years, particularly in discussion in this place, on how we deal with subordinate legislation and determinations of Ministers consequential upon Acts and the like. There is an opinion, which Mr Moore strongly advocates, that all such subordinate laws, all such subordinate regulations and all such determinations by a Minister should be disallowable. I think we have to balance that with how much business this Assembly can cope with, bearing in mind that our principal task is to legislate. What we are doing by making so much of our legislation, our subordinate regulations and the like disallowable is imposing an enormous future workload on this place, because at some future time every disallowable instrument will emerge back in this place for debate again. I think that we have to ask how much of this mundane, administrative-type material should be disallowable. That question then leads to further debate, time and time again here, which distracts us from our principal purpose of getting major legislation on the table.

I have no objection, in principle, to those amendments which Mr Moore has foreshadowed, which we will deal with when we come to the detail stage - except that they create a potential workload for this legislature which, in my view, is unproductive. In terms of the operations of the government departments, we seem to have adopted the principle: Let the managers manage. In terms of subordinate regulations and subordinate legislation, why not let the system do its thing? There is always the option for the Assembly to bring something back here for debate at some future time, if members disagree. You do not have to make every instrument disallowable to permit the Assembly to redebate the issue. In principle, I do not have any strong objections to Mr Moore's amendments. I would prefer that they were not adopted, because of the consequential workload that it will create.

There is one aspect of the matter, however, which I think I need to deal with in principle. That is that an individual or an organisation, an employer, an employee and any aspect of the workplace about which a Minister might issue an exemption also should carry the right of the person affected to appeal against that decision. The range of things for which the Minister can be called upon to consider an exemption is quite wide. They have to do, for example, with the qualifications of people. If a Minister is hampered in exercising his discretion to issue exemptions, for example, it may be that a person with some minor disability cannot be issued with a certificate of competency to practise his trade. There may well be circumstances in which, say, someone with a hearing disability - a partial loss of hearing - under normal circumstances, could not be issued with a certificate of competency without an exemption from the Minister. Yet there are many places where, and many occasions on which, such a person can ply their trade without any concern at all, with all the conditions of safety in the workplace still being observed. So, the Minister, in such a circumstance, has to be able to issue an exemption.

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