Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Wednesday, 25 August 2004) . . Page.. 4228 ..

That may well be a way to overcome some of the problems that Mrs Cross has mentioned, and that other members may have, and to ensure that this task force is representative of all the relevant people who are experts and who need to contribute to this scheme.

Mrs Cross’s amendments to Ms Gallagher’s amendment negatived.

MR STEFANIAK (9.50): I move amendment No 2 circulated in my name, which amends Ms Gallagher’s amendment No 3, specifically 47G [see schedule 2 at page 4282].

As I indicated before, the opposition—and, I think, everyone—is very pleased to see in the expanded regime that the government is going to conduct an education campaign and is going to have an expert task force. We see this as being essential. The task force has to give a report of its analysis—and no doubt it will be a detailed analysis—to the minister by 1 August next year. The minister must also present the report to the Legislative Assembly within five sitting days of the day the minister receives the report. We think it is absolutely essential because—as I, and a number of speakers, mentioned earlier—there are going to be problems with what we pass tonight. Amendments will have to be made; that is inevitable.

This task force is going to do a lot of work; it is basically going to come up with a regime. That being so, we think it is very sensible that there is an amendment to 47G (2) so that the minister has to present to the Assembly not only the report, within five sitting days of the day she receives it, but also a draft of regulations proposed to be made by the executive—that is, the government—in relation to the task force’s analysis, specifically the recommendations made by the task force pursuant to law.

I envisage that this task force will be able to say, “These are the laws you need to change; these are the regulations you need to change; this is going to make this scheme work for everyone.” If that is so, it might well be that the whole scheme can get up and running in a satisfactory way even prior to 16 October 2006. The opposition proposes this amendment. I think it would be a very important part of drawing on the work of the task force and very important too in terms of ensuring that this is a workable scheme that does the job everyone wants it to do.

MS GALLAGHER (Minister for Education and Training, Minister for Children, Youth and Family Support, Minister for Women and Minister for Industrial Relations) (9.53): The government is prepared to accept this amendment, with some reservations. The “five sitting days” makes me nervous—if that work has not been done by the task force—about there being enough time to be in a position to present it. There are usually at least two sitting weeks in August, so it could be the following week that we have to do this work.

I do not necessarilyy object to it, because I think it could possibly be part of the report that the task force brings down anyway, so it is probably covered off in subsection (a). If that is impossible, I imagine that the minister in charge would need to come back to the Assembly and provide an explanation about that. Because I believe that work will be part of that report to the government, I do not necessarily object to subsection (b).

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .