Page 3551 - Week 08 - Thursday, 18 August 2011
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The second schedule provides for minor, non-controversial amendments to the Legislation Act, initiated by the parliamentary counsel’s office. There are three distinct sets of amendments in this bill.
The first set of amendments gives the parliamentary counsel’s office more flexibility in how it can attend to notification of new legislation, legislative instruments, disallowances and Assembly amendments to disallowances or subordinate laws. Currently, if the legislation register is temporarily unavailable for technical or other reasons, the PCO can notify this in the gazette. These amendments will enable the PCO to give notification in another place it considers appropriate. Examples given in the bill are the gazette, another government website and outside the Legislative Assembly, like in the good old days. I note from the explanatory statement that the alternative means have never had to be accessed since the legislation register was established in September 2001.
The second set of amendments creates a definition of bank holiday and public holiday, tidies up the definition of business day and omits the definition of working day. These changes provide more clarity in relation to these matters.
The final amendment omits the definition of dental technician, because that discipline has been effectively deregulated by the Health Professionals Amendment Regulation 2010 (No 2).
Schedule 3 provides for minor or technical amendments initiated by parliamentary counsel. In this bill, 33 acts and regulations are amended. Finally, schedule 4 provides for routine repeals. One notifiable instrument and two disallowable instruments are repealed, which deal with the issue relating to dental technicians which I have previously mentioned.
The amendments put forward in this bill are once again testament to the great work of the parliamentary counsel’s office. In my assessment, the ACT’s statute book is the benchmark for Australia. No other jurisdiction has a statute book that is as accessible and readable as the ACT’s and it is to the credit of the PCO that this is the case. We are pleased to support these amendments.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development, Minister for Territory and Municipal Services and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (4.26), in reply: I thank members for their support of the bill.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Bill agreed to in principle.
Leave granted to dispense with the detail stage.
Bill agreed to.
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