Page 1893 - Week 05 - Thursday, 5 May 2011
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submission were made in his personal capacity. The words “purporting to speak for the Catholic Church” will be removed for the original text. I therefore seek leave to table a corrigendum to the Standing Committee on Health, Community and Social Service report No 5, Calvary Public Hospital Options.
Leave granted.
MR DOSZPOT: I present the following paper:
Health, Community and Social Services—Standing Committee—Report 5—Calvary Public Hospital Options—Corrigendum.
Executive business—precedence
Ordered that executive business be called on.
Justice and Community Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2011
Debate resumed from 31 March 2011, on motion by Mr Corbell:
That this bill be agreed to in principle.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (11.07): The Greens will be supporting this bill today. It makes some sensible and practical amendments to legislation relating to the Office of Regulatory Services.
Staff from the ORS play an important role in making the Canberra community safer and more just. They have the role of educating businesses about their legal requirements under the fair trading laws and enforce the law. From the Prostitution Act, the Tobacco Act, to the Second-hand Dealers Act and beyond, the ORS certainly have a diverse group of businesses to work with.
ORS staff really are where the rubber meets the road, in a regulatory sense. They are the staff who get out into the community to enforce many of the laws that we debate and pass here in the Assembly. It seems logical that their time will be best spent out meeting with businesses, educating them about their responsibilities, explaining the processes and, ultimately, enforcing the law where necessary. Time spent on unnecessary administrative tasks is to be avoided.
That is what is at the centre of the bill today—equipping the staff at ORS to work as efficiently as possible. Currently, ORS staff need multiple authorisation cards for all the diverse laws and regulations they operate under. The process of simply issuing these various cards to individual staff has become unnecessarily time consuming.
The government has identified an efficiency gain here where the number of cards can be reduced. The bill today gives this legislative effect, and the Greens support the efficiency measure. It is a commonsense decision which will free up ORS staff to focus on the main job at hand. Even if it is only a small saving per officer, it will add
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