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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 11 Hansard (6 November) . . Page.. 3708 ..

MR WHITECROSS: I move:

Page 4, line 27, add the following subclause:

"(3) An instrument made by the Minister under subsection (1) is a disallowable instrument for the purposes of section 10 of the Subordinate Laws Act 1989.".

Mr Speaker, I noticed that there was a slight difference in the wording and it seems, as Mr Kaine's amendment has been through the Parliamentary Counsel, that it would be safer. The Government have, obviously, considered their position and decided to pursue the same line. The purpose of this amendment is to ensure that a declaration of a regulated industry by the Minister is reviewable by the Assembly, that is, that the Assembly can have some say in what industries will come within the purview of the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Commission over and beyond the ones that are specified in the Act, namely, electricity, water and sewerage. I think the Bill, in its original form, represented an unnecessary and untoward delegation of legislative power to the Executive, which I do not think was appropriate. Obviously, the Scrutiny of Bills Committee did not think it was appropriate, either, because they reported on it in the report tabled on Tuesday. I do not think there is much more to say about it. I think the merits of it are self-evident.

The only other thing I would say is that, whilst I welcome Mr Kaine's support for an amendment of this type now, members of this place are entitled to be starting to get a bit weary of having to keep on moving amendments to correct inappropriate delegations of legislative power to the Executive without any review by parliament of this type. We have seen one here. I have another one in the Electricity Supply Bill which I think is of concern.

Mr Moore: We did a couple last sitting.

MR WHITECROSS: As Mr Moore says, there have been other examples as well. As I said, I welcome the fact that the Government now accept that making such orders disallowable is appropriate, but I think I would feel a lot more confident in the Government if they did not keep trying to slip these things past us and waiting for us to catch them out and put the clause back in. I hope that the Government will take that on board and perhaps be a little more diligent in their drafting, to ensure that these kinds of disallowance clauses are included where they believe that subordinate legislation is an appropriate mechanism for dealing with things under the Act. I believe that subordinate legislation is appropriate in this case, but I also believe that it is appropriate that the Assembly have the opportunity to debate any order made under this provision.

MR MOORE (12.07): Mr Speaker, in rising to support the amendment moved by Mr Whitecross, I would just like to take time to suggest to the Attorney-General that perhaps what he could do is instruct Parliamentary Counsel, which deals with these things all the time, that it is Government policy that disallowable instruments should, as a matter of course, be drafted when these sorts of delegated powers come up, so that as a matter of course these things would be disallowable instruments, unless somebody deliberately intends otherwise. My guess is that public servants would not deliberately say,

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