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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 09 Hansard (Tuesday, 17 August 2004) . . Page.. 3682 ..

Leave granted.

MR STEFANIAK: Scrutiny report 55 contains the committee’s comments on five bills, 71 pieces of subordinate legislation, four government responses and one regulatory impact statement. My committee colleagues want me to make a couple of statements. Firstly, we have received our first regulatory impact statement and I thank the government for that. It is something we have been after and have commented on before but we now have received our first one. So, thanks for that. Secondly, we still do not have a government response to subordinate law 2004-21 Australian Crime Commission Act Regulations 2004. We would be grateful if we could receive that at the earliest possible opportunity. I commend the report to the Assembly.

Heritage Bill 2004

Ordered that order of the day No 1, executive business, be postponed until a later hour.

Suspension of standing and temporary orders

Motion (by Mr Wood) agreed to, with the concurrence of an absolute majority:

That so much of the standing and temporary orders be suspended as would prevent order of the day No 13, Private Members’ business, relating to the Drugs of Dependence Amendment Bill 2003, being called on and debated cognately with order of the day No 2, Executive business, relating to the Criminal Code (Serious Drug Offences) Amendment Bill 2004.

Criminal Code (Serious Drug Offences) Amendment Bill 2004

[Cognate bill:

Drugs of Dependence Amendment Bill 2003]

Debate resumed from 24 June 2004, on motion by Mr Wood:

That this bill be agreed to in principle.

MR STEFANIAK (11.20): The opposition welcomes, and obviously will be supporting, the government’s bill. We have a couple of amendments and I will get to them later. I will also speak to a couple of amendments in relation to my bill, which we are debating cognately. The government’s bill continues the reform process of the model criminal code, something I have spoken on at length before, something we were happy to start the process with, and something I am pleased to see the government has continued. In this case, I am pleased to see it has adopted pretty faithfully the recommendations of the officers’ committee.

I understand a number of other states are in the process of doing this already. The Commonwealth is about to, Victoria has largely, and I think South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory will by the end of this year. The principle of uniform legislation in the criminal law across Australia is to be welcomed. Crime knows no boundaries, and hopefully at some stage in the future we will have uniform criminal laws

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