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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 04 Hansard (Thursday, 1 April 2004) . . Page.. 1601 ..

MS DUNDAS (10.54): I move amendment No 1 circulated in my name [see schedule 6 at page 1616].

Mr Speaker, this is a very simple amendment and it is not intended to be controversial. We have spoken a number of times in this Assembly about what we mean by the term “as soon as practicable”. We have, in the bill before us, this term requiring that, when the minister receives a report from the NHMRC licence committee, he present that to the Assembly as soon as is practicable. I just want to clear that up and say that we should ensure that the reports of the National Health and Medical Research Council are tabled within the usual six sitting days.

I have no doubt that the minister would have made sure that the report was tabled promptly but I hope that members can support this very simple and practical amendment, in the interests of ensuring precision in our legislation.

MR CORBELL (Minister for Health and Minister for Planning) (10.56): Mr Speaker, this is a reasonable amendment which puts in place a more specific timeframe for the tabling of this report. The government is happy to support the amendment.

MRS DUNNE (10.56): I will be supporting this amendment because it gives some clarity to the reporting process. If we are to have a bill like this, there should be as much reporting and clarity as possible. What Ms Dundas’s amendment does, by requiring tabling within six days, is take a reasonable approach. An issue that arises in this place on a fairly regular basis is that we are enormously inconsistent across legislation in relation to reporting deadlines. Correcting this might be a job for this Assembly—but not at this stage—or perhaps a future Assembly. There might be a reference to the Legal Affairs Committee to come up with a formula so that we can impose some regularity.

We had this experience during the debate on the planning and land bill because, in the course of debate on the original bill, there were about half a dozen different provisions for tabling depending on what sort of instrument was involved. We eventually came up with a solution, suggested by the secretariat, that provided consistency across that piece of legislation and that was a very good move.

However, we still have a lot of inconsistency between pieces of legislation and this bill is an example of it. For instance, in relation to the Commissioner for the Environment report, at one stage there was a provision—before it was amended the last time—that that report be tabled within 15 days of the commissioner’s reporting. However, when we amended it during the week, we seem to have taken out that provision so there is no requirement for it to be tabled. I do not know whether that was intended, but it was a strange outcome.

We have a vast array of inconsistent approaches and what Ms Dundas does today is highlight that. I will support her amendment but I want to put on the record that there should be a wider whole-of-government approach to tabling provisions in legislation.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 35, as amended, agreed to.

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