Page 2195 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 22 June 2010
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2004. This will include volunteer members of the Rural Fire Service, State Emergency Service, community fire units, as well as casual volunteers and emergency service support volunteers who help out in emergencies in and around the ACT.
I am particularly pleased, as Minister for Police and Emergency Services, that the government is providing this important reform. It recognises that many ACT employers support these activities by allowing their employees to participate in emergency situations as volunteers.
The amendment to the Payroll Tax Act to exempt wages paid to employees during an emergency will reduce the financial burden on businesses and provide a further incentive to these employers to continue in their very important task of supporting their employees to participate as volunteers, to help protect everyone in the community. I thank members for their support of the bill and I commend it to the Assembly.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Bill agreed to in principle.
Leave granted to dispense with the detail stage.
Bill agreed to.
Crimes (Sentence Administration) Amendment Bill 2010
Debate resumed from 25 March 2010, on motion by Mr Corbell:
That this bill be agreed to in principle.
Motion (by Mrs Dunne) negatived:
That debate be adjourned.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (5.03): About a week ago I wrote to the Attorney-General—and I copied the letter to the Greens’ representative on Attorney-General’s matters—asking the Attorney-General to address the issues that were raised in the scrutiny of bills report—the second set of comments that the scrutiny of bills committee raised in relation to this important bill. This is a bill which the Canberra Liberals will be supporting, but in doing so I have to draw members’ attention to the quantity and the strength of the comments made by the scrutiny of bills committee and the complete and abject failure of the Attorney to address those issues.
The bill is a significant policy change and, by its very nature, has significant human rights implications. In the ordinary course, when there are significant policy changes and human rights implications it would be proper for those implications to be examined, reasoned and argued in the explanatory statement and in the presentation speech. In the case of this bill, these matters of policy change and human rights implications have been left entirely unaddressed, save for two mentions. One is the
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