Page 29 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 15 February 2011
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the relevant provision only covers—and I quote—“a person other than a worker”. Why the attorney simply could not fess up to the fact that this was an error and call it for what it was, rather than try to hide it as a clarification, one can only speculate.
Schedule 3 in this bill amends 31 acts and regulations to effect a range of minor technical amendments that are non-controversial. They involve correction of minor errors, updating language, improving syntax, minor consequential amendments and other minor changes.
This SLAB bill, as with previous SLAB bills, serves to keep the ACT’s statute book easy to access and understand. It is testament to the great work of the parliamentary counsel’s office and I am pleased, once again, to have the opportunity to acknowledge the quality of their work and the commitment to setting the national benchmark for a well-maintained statute book. It is something that we in this place can be proud of. I commend the bill to the Assembly.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (11.24): The Greens will be supporting this bill. This amendment bill makes changes to 37 ACT acts and regulations. All the changes are designed to update our statute book and keep our laws up to date. As Mrs Dunne has noted to some extent, the individual changes are minor and would not warrant an amendment bill in their own right. However, when taken as a package they represent an important piece of work. Maintaining an accessible and easily understood statute book is one measure of the openness and accountability of a democracy. For this reason, the Greens support the changes proposed in the bill and we support the ongoing program of updating and improving our statue book.
The attorney has discussed some of the more interesting amendments and I will not repeat what has already been said, other than to say we have tracked through the changes and agree with each of them. These are minor changes but, when added together, form an important suite of improvements to our laws and the Greens support them.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment, Climate Change and Water, Minister for Energy and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (11.25), in reply: I thank members for their support of this bill. This bill carries on the technical amendments program that continues to develop a simpler, more coherent and accessible statute book for the territory through minor legislation changes. It is an efficient mechanism to take care of non-controversial, minor or technical amendments to a range of territory legislation, while conserving resources that would otherwise be needed if the amendments were dealt with individually.
Each individual amendment is minor, but when viewed collectively they are a significant contribution to improving the operation of the affected legislation and the statute book overall. For example, two minor amendments of the Mental Health (Treatment and Care) Act 1994 will improve the practical administration of the act by making the process of delegating certain functions under the act simpler and more consistent with other similar delegations.
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