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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 03 Hansard (Thursday, 11 March 2004) . . Page.. 1117 ..

Amendment agreed to.

Proposed new clause 60A agreed to.

Clauses 61 to 68, by leave, taken together and agreed to.

Clause 69.

MR CORBELL (Minister for Health and Minister for Planning) (5.35): I move amendment No 12 circulated in my name [see schedule 2 at page 1181].

Clause 69 entitles the registrar to require certain people to give evidence and to produce certain things in certain circumstances. This amendment inserts a note into the clause, drawing attention to the rights provided for in the Legislation Act, which may exempt a person from having to comply with a requirement to give evidence or produce documents on the basis of self-incrimination or client legal privilege.

MRS DUNNE (5.36): The Liberal opposition will be supporting this amendment. I will just draw people’s attention—unless this is a drafting quirk—to the fact that “self-incrimination” should be two words or a hyphenated word, not one word.

MS DUNDAS (5.36): I welcome the fact that this bill does not seek specifically to displace the privilege against self-incrimination. It is useful that this amendment points out the privileges in the Legislation Act, so I am quite happy to see that the government has not repeated the proposal put forward in the Dangerous Substances Bill, which actually displaced privilege.

I hope that this bill demonstrates that it is possible to have a workable regulatory scheme without having to displace the important legal principle of privilege. It would be interesting to compare how the Dangerous Substances Bill and this piece of legislation work at the same time. I hope we keep a watching brief on this and no longer have instances where we are removing important longstanding legal rights, like the privilege against self-incrimination.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 69, as amended, agreed to.

Clauses 70 to 77, by leave, taken together and agreed to.

Clause 78.

MR CORBELL (Minister for Health and Minister for Planning) (5.38): I move amendment No 13 circulated in my name [see schedule 2 at page 1181]. This amendment has the same effect as my previous amendment, No 12.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 78, as amended, agreed to.

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