Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 4 Hansard (30 March) . . Page.. 1092 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

It is fair to ask, however, whether it is safe to repeal all these Acts. Is it possible, for example, that one of them might contain a provision that should be kept in force? Mr Speaker, Parliamentary Counsel's Office has gone to considerable lengths to satisfy itself that these Acts can be safely repealed. First of all, the Interpretation Act 1967 was amended last year to ensure that the repeals in this Bill could be made. The repeals in this Bill are supported by a number of provisions of the Interpretation Act. For example, section 39 provides that repealing and amending Acts are not revived on their repeal; section 41 provides that the repeal of an Act does not affect, among other things, any right, privilege or liability; and subsection 42 (1) saves the effect of transitional, validating and related consequential provisions. These three provisions in themselves are probably enough to allow the Acts in question to be safely repealed.

Where there is a possibility, however, that a provision in an amending Act might still have some operation, the additional precaution has been taken of declaring that provision to be one to which section 42 applies. This is the purpose of Schedule 6 of the Bill - which needs to be read in conjunction with subclause 5 (2). Schedule 6 identifies one or more provisions in a number of Acts. The effect of section 42 is that, although the provision is repealed by Schedule 5, it continues to have effect, if in fact it has any, despite its repeal.

I should also point out, Mr Speaker, that there will be no similar accumulation of amending Acts in the future. This is a consequence of two fairly recent developments. The first of these concerns the practice of the Parliamentary Counsel's Office. It is now the practice of that Office to insert transitional provisions that relate to a particular Act in that Act itself. Similarly, if an amendment of an Act is accompanied by a special application or validation provision, the application or validation provision will be inserted in the Principal Act rather than operate as a provision of the amending Act. This means that the whole of the law may now be found in the one place (that is, the Principal Act). The result is that a person using the Principal Act will no longer need to go searching back in earlier amending Acts to discover the effect of an earlier amendment. As a consequence of this change in drafting practice, future amending Acts will almost always operate only to amend a Principal Act (or Acts). This, in turn facilitates the operation of section 43 of the Interpretation Act 1967 which was inserted late last year. This provides that amending Acts enacted on or after 1 January 2000 are automatically repealed the day after all of their provisions have commenced.

Some of the amendments in Schedule 3 of the Bill are intended to apply this new drafting practice to some of the old amending Acts. For example, if a provision in an amending Act repealed by Schedule 5 appears to have operation into the future, a corresponding provision will be inserted into the relevant Principal Act by one of the amendments in Schedule 3 of the Bill.

Mr Speaker, I am conscious that much of what I have been describing is rather technical. I am pleased to assure the Assembly, however, that the enactment of these provisions will lead to a considerable shortening and simplification of the statute book of the Territory.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .