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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 4 Hansard (29 March) . . Page.. 1132 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

The amendments made by the Bill are technical, minor, repetitive and, of course, consequential on the new Legislation Act. However, the effect of the amendments on access to ACT legislation will be quite significant.

The Bill enhances access to ACT legislation in 2 important ways. First, the Bill provides for extensive amendment of the ACT legislative provisions dealing with notification of legislation. Since 1911, ACT legislation and statutory instruments have been notified in the printed Gazette. The statute book has developed a strong Gazette orientation, particularly in relation to the notification of statutory instruments. This is evident not only in the numerous references to the Gazette across the statute book, but also in the way provisions are written to reflect the background procedures surrounding the publication of a printed Gazette.

Under the Legislation Act 2001, the notification of legislation will be done electronically, by registration on the legislation register. Also, notification under the Legislation Act requires the full text publication of the law or instrument as part of its registration. This will significantly enhance access to the text of ACT laws by providing faster access to new laws and improved access to the text of laws that previously were difficult to find.

Existing provisions are written on the basis of short-form Gazette notification rather than full text publication. Therefore, many provisions currently providing for gazettal, either expressly or by implication, need to be restructured, at least to some degree, to work appropriately for full text publication. In some cases, without restructuring, the wrong instrument would be notified under the Legislation Act. In other cases, without restructuring there is no instrument, apart from the Gazette notice itself, that could be notified.

The Legislation Act also defines notification and notification day, linking them to notification under the Act. The Bill therefore amends Acts and subordinate laws to reflect the new notification requirements, incorporate the concepts of notification and notification day and insert explanatory notes to assist users of legislation.

Second, the Bill will make a substantial improvement to the quality of the ACT statute book, particularly by rationalising and standardising a large number of provisions. These include, for example, those dealing with approved forms, the determination of fees and the making of regulations and other statutory instruments. Standard provisions improve legislative access by removing unnecessary inconsistency and complexity from the statute book (and the resulting confusion for users); by eliminating distracting clutter from the statute book; and, most importantly, by providing simplified, but reliable and effective laws that legislation users find easy to read, understand and use.

In the past, subordinate laws and some Acts set out the required format for such things as licences and application forms. The relevant forms were usually set out in a schedule to the Act or subordinate law. One of the problems with this approach, however, was that any change to the form required an amendment of the relevant law. This rigidity hampered innovation and increased the risk that forms would contain out-of-date-material.

In more recent times, a more flexible approach has developed. Rather than set out the forms in the legislation itself, the Act or regulations have required documents to be in a form 'approved' by a particular person, usually the Minister or an official. Until recently the practice was to require the use of the relevant approved form in

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