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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Wednesday, 23 June 2004) . . Page.. 2550 ..

will be 26 August, and the caretaker period will start on 13 September. Ideally, we will have an election on 16 October, but we may have an election on 4 December, depending on what the federal government does.

If we have the election on 16 October, we will probably seek to elect the new government on or about 9 November. It is then likely that the first proper sitting, which would be the first opportunity for any of the members to move disallowance on regulations that they disagree with, would occur on or around 30 November or Tuesday 7 December. That would be a period of three months.

In the event that the federal election intervenes and we are bumped to 4 December, it is quite likely that, when the poll is declared and we sit within the six days after the declaration of the poll, this place will sit on something like 28 December, which would mean that the first proper sitting following the New Year and January break might be in February 2005. That would mean a minimum of five months without the scrutiny of any regulation.

We have some significant bills before the house, and in this session we have passed some significant bills. But we are yet to see the regulations. The government has brought forward some of the bills as a package, and we have seen the legislation itself with the regulations attached. The construction industry bills Mr Corbell did are a good example of that, but we are yet to see the regulations for some of the other bills before us, like the tree legislation or the heritage legislation. The way we seem to be going, I doubt that we will see the regulations before the house rises and we move into caretaker mode.

A good example is the regulations that will accompany the new gambling legislation. In this case the taxation rate will be in the regulations. If the regulations are tabled after the rise of the Assembly and there is no scrutiny until either three or five months later, there will be nothing to stop the government raising that tax rate without the scrutiny of the Assembly for three to five months. I am not saying that the government will do it, but that scrutiny is important. It is actually the role of this place to scrutinise what the government does.

I am suggesting in this motion that we call on the government to refrain from making any new regulations after 16 August for new bills that are passed in these June, July and August sittings. The logic is that no-one will have the opportunity to scrutinise them until the new government is sworn in. Governments make regulations all the time, and this government will no doubt make regulations in the caretaker period, if they are not significant regulations. But we will not see large blocks of new regulations. They will sit here waiting for scrutiny, because the six-day period will not have gone away.

That amendment to the Legislation Act has in it the opportunity to move disallowance, but they won’t get to that until either December or February next year. In my motion I am saying that, for this place to be able to scrutinise what the government is doing in relation to some fairly significant legislation, those regulations should be tabled on the Monday of the second last sitting week so that members who have concerns have the opportunity in the following six sitting days to move disallowance. If the government is not ready to table its regulations and if the regulations are so far off that we will not have the opportunity to scrutinise them in August, it would be fair for the government not to

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