Page 4431 - Week 10 - Thursday, 23 September 2010
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Mr Corbell’s response only serves to confuse the matter even more. He says on one hand that it is accepted and understood that this kind of provision does not restrain the Assembly’s power to make laws, even laws that amend, repeal or override the provision itself. And that is the case. However, Mr Corbell also says that if he were to insert a note in the legislation that explains that acceptance and that understanding, it would “result in undue confusion and potential limiting of the provision”. Undue confusion and potential limiting of the provision? It is quite clear that the attorney himself is not afraid of creating undue confusion when he deals with these matters, and there is nothing in the attorney’s response to the scrutiny of bills committee that clarifies the position.
Whilst we will support this amendment, I call on the government, in putting forward future legislation that carries a similar provision, to either draft the provision so as to be honest about the consequences or, as the committee called for, to provide a note in the legislation to disclose the real position that relates to the provision.
The second matter that the bill deals with relates to the Evidence (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1991. This amendment would allow evidence to be taken by an ACT court via audio and audiovisual link from other places in Australia not covered by the related legislation endorsed by SCAG in 1997. The example given in the explanatory statement is Victoria, which did not enact the model legislation because it already had legislation in place that achieved a similar purpose. This amendment would treat the extrajurisdictional location as being part of the ACT court for the purposes of proceedings. Once again, other legislation is amended as a consequence, mainly dealing with cross-referencing.
The third matter dealt with in this bill is a simple amendment to the Juries Act 1967. This amendment would allow the minister to determine payments to jurors by disallowable instrument rather than by regulation. It creates efficiency, particularly by not calling on the resources of the parliamentary counsel every time the payment needs to change because of an indexation calculation. Since a regulation is disallowable anyway, a disallowable instrument maintains the required level of transparency that is currently provided.
Finally, the bill amends the Supreme Court Act 1933. The opposition will be opposing most of these amendments. There are three groups of amendments. The first involves simple language updating and clarification. The second amendment broadens the scope of a judge-alone trial. The third amendment clarifies what was probably thought to be the case anyhow—that the commonwealth Evidence Act applies in the ACT and in territory law. The third of these matters is quite uncontroversial. We are told by the explanatory statement that it is to overcome potential difficulties, identified by Justice Penfold in a recent case, that may arise in matters of evidence in judge-alone trials.
However, the second group of amendments to the Supreme Court Act are of primary concern, and this is an area where the attorney has not dealt entirely honestly with this Assembly.
This JACS bill was introduced in the last sitting. In the period of slightly over a month since that time, we have been out to consultation on these, but changes in
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