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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 9 Hansard (3 September) . . Page.. 2851 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

Mr Speaker, this amendment is, in many respects, a consequential amendment in relation to the amendment we have just passed.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 6 agreed to.

Clauses 7 to 10, by leave, taken together

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (4.23): Mr Speaker, there are two issues which this legislation deals with - at least two, but two principal issues. One is the question, which we have just extensively debated, of the provision about banning the production of battery eggs in the ACT and the timing under which that is done. The other issue is the question of increased powers available to the animal welfare inspectors. I made some comments about that in the in-principle stage of the Bill. I rise just to affirm those statements here and to indicate that what we are doing by passing these provisions - that is, clauses 7 to 10 - is replacing the legislation, in so far as it offers powers to inspect with certain protections in place, with much more draconian and much more widespread powers on the part of inspectors.

Mr Speaker, I, certainly, in this place, have always argued - not in every case, but I have argued it consistently - that the appropriate circumstances in which to authorise officers of the ACT Public Service to enter into other people's property need to be carefully considered and restricted to certain circumstances. There are limited circumstances where we describe a broader power than the one which exists at the moment in the Animal Welfare Act, but those cases are very limited. They are limited, I think, to matters of considerable importance and urgency, such as under the health legislation.

These provisions are different. The kind of protection to citizens against the arbitrary entry into their premises which is foreshadowed in these amendments, I think, needs to be maintained. Mr Speaker, it seems to me appropriate that entry in these cases should occur if one of four circumstances is satisfied: If there is consent by the occupier of the premises; or if the occupier of the premises has been given a reasonable period of notice - in the case of this legislation, seven days; or if there occurs a set of circumstances which are of such urgency that the apprehension of an offence or the obtaining of evidence or some other urgent state of affairs is given rise to and that requires the immediate entry into the premises; or if a warrant has been duly obtained from the Magistrates Court. In my view, Mr Speaker, those are the four circumstances. Those provisions are already built into the legislation. If we pass clauses 7 to 10, we obviate the protections available in the legislation by those conditions. Therefore, I would urge members not to support clauses 7 to 10 of the Bill.

MR MOORE (4.26): Mr Speaker, this morning, when Mr Humphries spoke in the in-principle stage, he raised a number of important issues and drew my attention to the fact that supporting these amendments would be inconsistent with the way I had operated in the Assembly on this same issue on many occasions. Indeed, Mr Speaker, I had already been feeling somewhat concerned about some of the powers and how they were applied,

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