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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 9 Hansard (21 August) . . Page.. 3057 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

Subclause 419 (2) imposes a mandatory civil penalty, which is something the committee felt was worth mentioning. This is where an officer of a cooperative accepts money in connection with a transaction of a cooperative, and what the subclause does is take away discretion from the court. It also addresses the burden of proof but, again, the explanatory memorandum provides no justification for the reversal of the onus of proof.

I turn now to the Food Bill. There were many problems in that, and I understand the government's response has picked up most of them, so I won't go on with that. But it just shows the value of the scrutiny process.

There were some issues of concern in the Rehabilitation of Offenders (Interim) Bill. The intrusion into the function of the sentencing court is one, and there were many problems with parole orders and in the practicalities of the board procedures. Again, there was no justification in the explanatory memorandum for retrospectivity.

At this point I would like to acknowledge the work that Celia Harsdorf does in conjunction with Mr Peter Bayne, the legal adviser, on the subordinate legislation. How she stays awake doing it, I am blessed if I know, Mr Speaker. But she does and does a brilliant job. All credit to her and those who trained her. A number of problems cropped up with subordinate legislation, and really these things should never occur. I think it has to do with sloppiness rather than anything else. For example, there was no indication in a lot of them of whether the subordinate legislation is disallowable. There are inaccurate gazettal notices, missing explanatory memoranda and missing attachments.

I wanted to make a comment about regulatory impact statements. I am sure Mr Moore is interested because he was right behind this with a knife at its back. On 21 June the Subordinate Laws (Amendment) Act came into force, through no impetus of the minister. We passed it in the December, and the minister quite happily sat there and let the six months dribble by until it became law. It is now law. We have noticed that, since 21 June, no regulatory impact statements have been provided, and I am sure there must have been a piece of subordinate legislation which had a major impact on certain parts of the community.

The committee considered this and the dangers inherent in the subsuming of the Subordinate Laws (Amendment) Act 2000 into the Legislation Act 2001. There is a requirement for people to examine the subordinate legislation for the possibility of regulatory impact statements, but it is quite possible that the people responsible for doing that will not recognise that they have this obligation. I do not think it is in the forefront of everybody's mind.

I understand that Mr Moore actually did something along the lines of a regulatory impact statement in the context of the Food Bill. If I am right, I would like to acknowledge that the author of such transparency is the first cab off the rank and needs to be applauded for that. If he did not, that is bad luck too.

It is strongly recommended to the Chief Minister that he advise ministers to instruct their departments to be aware of the contents of the parts of the Legislation Act dealing with regulatory impact statements; part of the law is that ministers will provide explanations

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