Page 4737 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 31 October 2017
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court hearing. It is important to recognise that the coroner still retains discretion to hold a hearing where the coroner believes it reasonable to do so.
There is also a range of changes and amendments being brought forward relating to the Court Procedures Act 2004. We understand that they arise from consultations with the Law Society and have been also subject to consultation with the Bar Association. Both support those changes.
There is an amendment to the Crimes Act to change references to “director-general” to “regulator” and so on. And there is a range of other changes, including to the Legal Profession Act, the Family Violence Act and the Guardianship and Management of Property Act.
I will, though, talk about the changes to the Liquor Act 2010 to broaden the membership of the Liquor Advisory Board. What it actually does is remove the specific reference to the clubs industry and the hospitality industry and replaces it with “a representative of the night-time economy”. In briefings the government claimed that the industry bodies accept this change. However, our own consultations with sections of the industry revealed that they were not really consulted at all. I do not know whether that is because this is a government that refuses to engage with an industry group that represents the majority of stakeholders in the clubs sector other than those, as I have said before, that directly fund the Labor Party and the Greens.
Mr Parton: The friendly ones.
MR HANSON: That is right; they will consult the new clubs grouping because they directly fund them with massive donations equating to tens of millions of dollars in funding over the years. One would hope that that is not the reason for this plot but, given the way that the government has behaved towards the clubs sector and ClubsACT, it is difficult to think that this has been done for any other reason than out of spite.
The amendment to the Road Transport (General) Act 1999 allows a person to volunteer to be the responsible driver of a vehicle registered to another person. Currently, as we have been briefed, the mechanism is for the registered owner to nominate the other person. That seems like a sensible addition. There are other amendments also, but I will not go into the detail, to the Road Transport (Offences) Regulation 2005 and the Territory Records Act as well.
I come now to the Freedom of Information Act 2016 and the amendments that have been made there. This is the legislation that was worked on and that was brought forward by Mr Rattenbury, supported by the Canberra Liberals, and then essentially we forced the government, the Labor Party, to adopt this legislation largely against their will, it must be said. And we got to a position where before the last election we had a bill that I think should have been in operation a lot earlier than it will be because of delays, disappointingly, by the Greens who had such a sense of urgency before the election and then did not have that same sense of urgency post the election.
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