Page 1065 - Week 03 - Thursday, 26 February 2009
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MR HANSON: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It goes to my point that the minister in question, the Attorney-General, does not seem to have a grip of the detail of his portfolio and, as a result, mistakes have been made. In this case something has been done that is illegal. The minister should be taking responsibility for his actions and, in doing so, he should be taking these aspects of this bill forward separately so that he can then say, “Yes, I made a mistake. Yes, it was illegal. I apologise.” He should take full accountability and responsibility for his actions rather than trying to slip it through with some other issues that are being discussed and essentially blame his department for this mistake.
I call on the minister to demonstrate leadership, to demonstrate that he is actually making the decisions and that he is accountable for the actions of his department. A clear way, an easy way, for him to do that would be to split this bill, to take those issues up separately, to make a clear and definitive statement of why he made the mistake and to take responsibility for his actions.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment, Climate Change and Water, Minister for Energy and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (11.44), in reply: I thank members for their contributions to this debate. At the outset I have to take some issue with the repeated use of the word “illegal” in this debate. The word “illegal”, as it is used in a technical legal sense, generally connotes an act constituting a crime. Actions in breach of a statute or other civil law can properly be characterised as unlawful or invalid, but not illegal. I think there is real potential for disquiet to be caused when members use those phrases in that way. I simply draw that to members’ attention and refute the use of that term that members have used in this debate.
This bill is the 20th bill in a series of bills dealing with legislation within the justice and community safety portfolio. The bill makes amendments to a broad range of acts, and members would be familiar with those. The majority of the amendments contained in the bill relate to other laws that are due for commencement in coming months.
Following initial consultation with affected sectors of the community and the drafting of the head legislation, it is standard practice for my department to maintain a collaborative dialogue about the impending operation of new laws with relevant stakeholders that are both internal and external to government. These discussions are an important process to ensure that the legislation is implemented in accordance with the original policy intent and to identify any issues or concerns with the legislation prior to its commencement.
It is often only—and I stress only—in the detailed analysis phase that comes when new processes are about to commence that all minds are finally and finely focused on matters of practical implementation. This in turn gives rise to an important opportunity for finetuning and it is one of the reasons why an omnibus portfolio bill process in the justice arena has been seen as a beneficial mechanism. Indeed, it was implemented in 1999 by the then Attorney-General, Mr Humphries, and it was implemented for the very purpose that is being debated in the Assembly today.
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