Page 363 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 14 February 2017
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MR RAMSAY (Ginninderra—Attorney-General, Minister for Regulatory Services, Minister for the Arts and Community Events and Minister for Veterans and Seniors) (11.57), in reply: The Statute Law Amendment Bill 2016 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 and technical amendments to a range of territory legislation and conserving the 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 generally. I thank the opposition and the Greens for their support in this matter.
Briefly, the Annual Reports (Government Agencies) Act 2004 was amended consequentially by the Public Sector Management Amendment Act 2016. Following the amendments, the term “public authority” was replaced with “public sector body” and located in the Legislation Act 2001. However, the term did not include territory instrumentalities or declared bodies. As there was no intention to reduce the reporting requirements for these entities, the Annual Reports (Government Agencies) Act is amended to reinstate the reporting requirements for territory instrumentalities and declared bodies.
The Financial Management Act 1996 is amended in schedule 1 to replace references to the term “generally accepted accounting principles” with “accounting standards”. The current definition of generally accepted accounting principles is omitted from the dictionary because it is potentially unclear and a new definition of accounting standards is inserted instead.
The new definition is based on the definition of accounting standards in the commonwealth Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013, section 8, and is generally consistent with the definition of that term in equivalent legislation in other Australian jurisdictions.
The Lifetime Care and Support (Catastrophic Injuries) Act 2014, section 94(1), is amended to include the Nominal Defendant in the list of entities with whom the Lifetime Care and Support Commissioner may exchange information about the treatment and care needs of a participant in the lifetime care and support scheme under the act.
Other entities with whom the commissioner may exchange information include a licensed insurer under the Road Transport (Third-Party Insurance) Act 2008, a workers compensation insurer and the default insurance fund under the Workers Compensation Act 1951, a hospital where the participant is receiving treatment and care for the participant’s injury, the New South Wales Lifetime Care and Support Authority and the Compulsory Third Party insurance Regulator.
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