Page 3418 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 14 November 2006
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excess in some ways of those powers in our contentious antiterrorism law. I understand it is, thanks to concerns so eloquently raised in the scrutiny committee’s discussion of this bill, to be withdrawn by the minister for the time being.
The fact that section 59 was there in the first place raises very powerful questions regarding the government’s oversight of its own legislation and the value of the compatibility statements that are rolled out, without detail, when any government bill is tabled in the Assembly. We had a statement of compatibility, yet that was a glaring oversight that I am sure no member of this government would have been comfortable with. The Greens certainly are not.
My call for the discussion that underlies those compatibility statements to be made public is more and more strengthened. I will keep making that call, otherwise it is just too easy to write those words and waste a bit of paper at the same time.
While this government likes to claim the credit and take the high moral ground for leading from the front with the first human rights act in Australia, it would seem to be delivering very little if the parliament and the people of the territory are not part of the debate. I had thought, on reading the bill and its explanatory statement, that I would have been able to demonstrate to those doubters how the Human Rights Act works. However, the audit is secret; the explanations for the proposed changes to legislation on that basis are therefore flimsy; and other provisions that have been added to the bill seem to contradict it.
I understand that the staff that work on the human rights evaluation of legislation do not have much free time. There probably are not enough of them. I imagine they would love to provide a more detailed analysis of the human rights implications of legislation. They would probably like to make the process more transparent if they could. In this case, however, it would seem that, even when that analysis has been commissioned externally, in the mind of this government it is not something for us to see. I wonder how transparency and contestability rank in the process of building human rights compliant law.
I have the amendments here in front of me. I am pleased about those amendments. I am pleased that it has now been noticed that there was one provision—section 130C (1) (b) (ii), on page 15 at line 17—that removes subparagraph (ii) because it is no longer considered appropriate to make it a criminal offence to prevent any person from treating menstrual problems.
I am really glad that a good look at the legislation found that and had it removed, but it strengthens my original point—that we need this legislation to be out in the public for much longer so it gets the kind of scrutiny it deserves. This is a big bill. There is a lot in it. It covers a lot of areas. There are a lot of people with interests in it. I know there is a rush to get it done today. It will get through today, majority government or not, because I think there is goodwill in this Assembly. We want to make sure that what comes out of here is good law.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo) (11.26): I would like to talk to some of the provisions of the bill and obviously some of the concerns that have been raised by the scrutiny of bills
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