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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 10 Hansard (25 September) . . Page.. 3272 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

work he was doing for the Senate committee on subordinate legislation. That helped to give the work of the Assembly committee some perspective and stimulate our consideration of issues based on the kinds of issues that were being considered in the Senate. That was a valuable contribution.

It will be something of a challenge for the committee to replace Professor Whalan and to ensure that the Assembly continues to have the same level of service from the Standing Committee on Scrutiny of Bills and Subordinate Legislation that we have enjoyed in the past with the assistance of Professor Whalan. I am sure that my colleague Mr Wood is up to the task, but I am sure he appreciates, too, the nature of the challenge. I wish Professor Whalan all the best. I am sure that he will miss the work of the committee. I hope that he fares well in the future.

MR STEFANIAK (Minister for Education and Training) (11.00): Mr Speaker, I was on the Scrutiny of Bills Committee from when it started until the end of the First Assembly. I can remember when Doug Whalan took us all to the Senate to see how their subordinate legislation committee worked. Like Gary Humphries, I have known Professor Whalan since I was at university. In fact, we go back to the early 1970s, when he was one of my law lecturers. It was an honour and a pleasure to work with Doug Whalan on the Scrutiny of Bills Committee. As Mr Osborne has said, he certainly made the work of that committee very easy.

I was constantly amazed and highly impressed by the way complex legislation would be introduced into this place one day and the following day the committee would meet and Doug Whalan would give most learned, critical and detailed advice to the committee on what was wrong with parts of the legislation and suggestions on what we should do. He certainly had a fine mind. I think "genius" is probably not too high a term to accord to him. He was a highly intelligent man. He had good humour. It was a delight serving on the committee with him. He had an excellent wit. I always found Doug Whalan to be an absolutely thorough gentleman to deal with, in the true sense of the word.

I wish him well in his retirement. I hope he gets over his illness soon. I wish him a long and happy retirement. I congratulate him on many years of devoted public service not only to the Assembly and to assisting us in our formative stages, which he did so well, but also to the Australian National University and to the very many people whose lives he touched there, and touched for the better.

MR MOORE (11.02): Mr Speaker, the Scrutiny of Bills Committee is one of the few committees that I have not served on in this Assembly since 1989, but I did have the benefit on many occasions of the wisdom of Professor Whalan. His comments always improved legislation. He drew to our attention a range of issues about legislation that had been prepared by either the government or others in this Assembly and the previous two Assemblies.

For me, and I imagine for all members who have come through this Assembly, there was an educative process involved in the way that Professor Whalan would draw our attention to things. His suggestions about legislation or about whether we should be dealing with legislation that in some way was retrospective helped members learn very early that there are very important issues of principle behind legislation. It has been Professor Whalan

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