Page 1925 - Week 05 - Thursday, 3 May 2012

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the legislation is for the minister to determine the list of eligible activities, and to do so by a notifiable instrument. The process for working out some of the eligible activities seems to be fairly rigorous in the first instance, but I think that it is entirely appropriate that the Assembly retain the power to disallow that if the minister puts in eligible activities which we believe are not in the spirit of the scheme or are not warranted, or perhaps if evidence is put to us that an error has been made in the process of developing the list of eligible activities.

It is interesting to see the way that Mr Seselja has approached this issue today. I certainly was not expecting that angle. I prepared this amendment before he came in with his analysis of the legislation. Whilst I disagree with his analysis of the legislation, I think this amendment in some ways speaks to the concern that Mr Seselja has. It is certainly not my expectation that the sorts of measures he described would be allowed under this legislation. They are certainly not in the draft list in the regulatory impact statement. They have not been approved on the Victorian list. But if somehow the government took a policy decision that they wanted to go down the path that Mr Seselja is speculating they might, the Assembly should be able to disallow it, because it would be very contrary to the spirit and intent of how I believe the legislation has been framed. This provides an insurance against the scenario that Mr Seselja describes.

I did provide this amendment to both the government and the opposition. I flagged it with the government last week and provided it to the opposition when we got it back from PCO yesterday. I have not had a response. I do not know what is going to happen this morning. It is a mystery coming here with these sorts of things sometimes. It is part of the excitement, I suppose. The government has indicated its opposition to this, so the Liberal Party find themselves with the balance of power. It will be interesting to see how they exercise that balance of power today. Are they going to help us put the insurance policy in place to make sure that should the government go down the path that Mr Seselja fears, the Assembly has the power to act against that?

I think it is important that we put this safeguard in place. I commend my amendment to the Assembly.

Question put:

That Mr Rattenbury’s amendment be agreed to.

The Assembly voted—

Question so resolved in the negative.

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