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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 9 Hansard (4 September) . . Page.. 3036 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

I inadvertently forgot to draw Mr Moore's attention to this one. Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, this amendment is to make the manual that is prescribed under clause 5 a disallowable instrument, as was proposed by the Scrutiny of Bills Committee, although it was not one of the recommendations of the Scrutiny of Bills Committee taken up by the Minister. So, I am taking it up for him. The Scrutiny of Bills Committee made the very good point that the Federal Parliament allows Australian Design Rules in relation to motor vehicles to be disallowable, and raised the question: If Australian Design Rules can be disallowable, why can the vehicle inspection manual in the ACT not be disallowable? They raised a good question, and I think the answer is that it should be disallowable.

I understand, and I am sure that all members understand, that this is a very technical manual. It would be only on rare occasions that we would seek to delve into that matter. Nevertheless, it is a piece of delegated legislation, and I think, on principle, the legislature should have the opportunity to exercise its rights under section 10 of the Subordinate Laws Act.

MR KAINE (Minister for Urban Services) (10.48): Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I do not believe that Mr Whitecross knows what kind of whirlwind he is going to reap when he sows this one. Maybe he does not know what the manual looks like and maybe he does not know what its purpose is; but it is a very substantial volume, and it is amended constantly. In fact, I am informed that, from Australian Design Rules alone, there are up to 60 determinations a year, and each of those can contain up to 10 different matters. So, on that basis, there can be up to 600 individual design rule changes under the ADRs, all of which have to be incorporated into this, and, under Mr Whitecross's rule, every one of them has to come to this Assembly because they are a disallowable instrument. The interesting thing about that is that there are changes in Australian Design Rules. Is Mr Whitecross going to suggest that a change goes through the ADR process, it is adopted nationally, it comes to us, it gets into our manual, it comes to this place, and we are going to disallow it?

I am talking only about changes as a result of ADRs. There are many other changes as well. So, I do not think Mr Whitecross knows what he is talking about. I just cannot imagine how we in this place are going to process that number of individual changes to the manual every year and give them any sort of reasonable consideration. I do not think it is possible. And why would we want to? I simply do not understand why Mr Whitecross would want to foist this kind of administrative task on a legislative body. It just seems to me to be quite foolish. Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I think you can tell that this is an amendment that I do not support.

MR MOORE (10.50): It would appear that the Minister is not over-happy with this one; but it seems to me that it is an entirely appropriate manoeuvre. It struck me, as Mr Kaine was speaking, that the Australian Design Rules, which are agreed to by public servants, are about setting out what they are going to do in terms of Australian design of cars. Those public servants, I presume - and you may correct me on this - are people from your department and from departments all around Australia. They then decide what is and what is not appropriate; it is put into the Australian Design Rules and then put into the manual. Other things could be put into the manual as well, of course.

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