Page 1062 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 6 May 2014
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jurisdiction to pass the national law as a law of that state and then for the other states and territories to pass legislation applying the schedule in the host jurisdiction’s law as their own, whereas the national law and the regulator are hosted by South Australia. The law was passed by the South Australian Legislative Council in May 2012, enabling the states and territories to reference the law in their jurisdiction.
This bill will apply as a law of the ACT, the Rail Safety National Law, which is contained in the schedule to the Rail Safety National Law (South Australia) Act 2012 of South Australia. As to proposed legislation as part of a national scheme, commitments made by states and territories through the Intergovernmental Agreement on Rail Safety Regulation and Investigation Reform are for essentially uniform application of the national law as legislated by South Australia.
To ensure that the national law scheme operates consistently across participating jurisdictions, a number of jurisdictional laws are excluded from applying to the regulator. This bill contains local application provisions which ensure that the national law operates in the ACT in a nationally consistent manner, with the National Rail Safety Law included as a schedule.
The local application provisions of the law set out which ACT laws will not apply. These include acts dealing with the interpretation of legislation, financial matters, freedom of information, the role of the Ombudsman and matters relating to the employment of public servants. Instead, provisions are included in the national law to deal with each of these matters. This approach means that the same law applies in relation to each jurisdiction that adopts the national law.
The bill also includes provisions to make necessary adjustments to existing ACT laws to ensure that the regulator is effectively integrated, including amending, omitting, repealing or disapplying local laws that are inconsistent with the uniform operation of the national law or that would interfere with the efficient operations of the regulator in the ACT.
Consistent with this approach, the following territory laws do not apply: the Annual Reports (Government Agencies) Act, the Auditor-General Act, the Criminal Code, the Financial Management Act, the Freedom of Information Act, the Government Procurement Act, the Public Interest Disclosure Act, the Public Sector Management Act, and the Territory Records Act.
The national law does not contain or apply a privacy law regime, given that South Australia does not have its own privacy legislation. Accordingly, the Privacy Act 1988 of the commonwealth, which currently applies in the ACT, will apply to the regulator when exercising functions under this law.
The law sets out the functions and powers of the regulator, and includes the objectives of providing for the effective management of safety risks associated with railway operations and to promote public confidence in the safety of transport of persons or freight by rail.
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