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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 9 Hansard (2 September) . . Page.. 2782 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

The Greens will support the third amendment also, even though I am not totally convinced that it is appropriate to have the Administrative Appeals Tribunal actually having the right of review over legislative decisions, because it then comes back to this place and there is a disallowable instrument. I take it that the Minister and his advisers have said that it is appropriate to have the AAT in that position. I will have to accept that. I am quite happy to support this amendment.

MR KAINE (Minister for Urban Services and Minister for Industrial Relations) (5.33): Both Mr Berry and Ms Tucker have raised the question of whether exemptions ought to be issued. Let us be clear. Issuing exemptions under these Acts has not been, and nor will it be in the future, a growth industry.

Mr Moore: Has it ever been done?

MR KAINE: I am sure that there have been a few, but they would be rare and would be issued only where there are unusual circumstances. I notice, for example, that in New South Wales, where there is similar legislation, under one particular heading "Where requests have been received to exempt persons from the requirements of certification and regulation", in one year of operation there were only three applications received in the whole of New South Wales. Incidentally, all three of them were rejected. It is not something that is going to demand the attention of the Minister every day of the year; it will be a very rare thing; it will be fairly uncommon to get an application for an exemption. It will be even rarer for the Minister to approve it, I would suggest. I do not see that it is going to inundate the Assembly or the Administrative Appeals Tribunal with business if we introduce this minor legislation.

MR MOORE (5.34): Mr Speaker, in taking advice on my amendment, after comments made by Mr Berry and Mr Kaine, I wondered whether the amendments we passed earlier would have the effect of still retaining the power of disallowance in the hands of the Assembly. The question then becomes: If the Minister rejects an application, as those three New South Wales applications were rejected, but the Administrative Appeals Tribunal listens to the case and says, "No; you should not have rejected it; the case has been found" and a Minister has been forced to allow the exemption, is that decision of the Minister then subject to disallowance in this Assembly? If it is, then I have far less concern about this matter. In other words, the earlier amendments will have achieved much of what I wanted to achieve. But I think there is still some doubt as to whether or not that can be achieved. It depends how the AAT makes its decision. I am told that is a possible interpretation. At this stage we do not know.

It is for those reasons that I think this package of amendments will come together most effectively if this amendment is supported. I say that on the one hand. On the other hand, if indeed the scenario is such that even when the AAT has rejected the Minister's rejection - there is a double negative there - and allows it to go ahead, if the Assembly can then move for a disallowance I am not as concerned. It seems to me that the best thing for this Assembly to do is to pass this amendment along with the others; but the most important thing, at the end of the day, was that the previous group of amendments were passed.

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