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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 10 Hansard (28 August) . . Page.. 3338 ..
MR SMYTH (continuing):
This amendment seeks to omit subclause (1) of clause 3 and substitute a subclause which specifies the Workers Compensation Regulations in addition to the Workers Compensation Act 1951. It is simply a formal requirement.
Amendment agreed to.
Clause 3, as amended, agreed to.
MR SMYTH (Minister for Urban Services, Minister for Business, Tourism and the Arts and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (11.21): Mr Speaker, I would like to seek leave to move all of the amendments circulated in my name together. The basic purpose of these amendments is to move the regulations into the body of the act. I have consulted with the PCO and I believe the amendments are drafted in such a way that this course could be followed. We could then adjourn the debate to let others come back and look at what they might seek to amend. There is broad agreement with what we are doing. These are the regulations that many members have asked to be shifted across into the act.
Mr Berry: Could you just go through that again. You want to adjourn it?
MR SMYTH: I am seeking leave to move all of my amendments in one hit. The amendments seek to move all of the regulations into the act itself, which is what many members want to see happen. If members are agreeable to that course, I would seek to adjourn the debate to let Mr Berry and Ms Tucker consider their amendments. I believe the majority of members would like to see the regulations put into the act.
One of the ways to overcome some of the confusion would be to deal with this part of the legislation. We could come back later today and Mr Berry and Ms Tucker could then move their amendments.
MR SPEAKER: The methodology would be to move that the bill as a whole be agreed to. But you will need leave to do that, Mr Smyth.
MR BERRY (11.23): Mr Speaker, I am not going to oppose anything that facilitates a tidy debate, but I want everybody to understand exactly where they are heading. I am not sure that the contribution the minister has just made assists us that much. I am happy for him to adjourn the debate to a later hour this day, which would give us the opportunity to sit down and try to work out a way forward. I am willing to accommodate any sensible move forward. But I would prefer not to make any moves until I understand exactly the implications of what the minister is doing, and I am sad to say that I am not prepared to take his word for it.
As I said, I am happy for the debate to be adjourned to a later hour this day, during which time we can have a bit of a confab on the approach. On the face of it, I do not have any particular difficulty with that approach because, one way or another, we are going to have to have a goal to work towards. But before we adopt that approach, I would just like to sit down and work out what the effects will be.
Let us adjourn the debate to a later hour today so that we can have a discussion and sort all of this out. Why don't you just move that the debate be adjourned?
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