Page 358 - Week 01 - Thursday, 9 February 2023
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that does reflect our community’s values and for ensuring there is strong ownership of it across the whole community.
Finally, to our wonderful multicultural community in Canberra: thank you for your work, encouragement, contribution and support. Ms Orr has provided many expressions of this today, and I am so grateful, as is this government, for your efforts in creating and shaping this bill and for what you do in living our values and enriching our community, often without a lot of fanfare. It is seen, and it is seen and valued by me and this government. It is a great honour to work with you.
This act is a vital part of the ACT government’s broader work to ensure Canberra remains the most welcoming and inclusive city in Australia. I commend the bill to the chamber.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Bill agreed to in principle.
Leave granted to dispense with the detail stage.
Bill agreed to.
Electricity Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2022
Debate resumed from 11 October 2022, on motion by Ms Vassarotti:
That this bill be agreed to in principle.
MR PARTON (Brindabella) (5.40): The Canberra Liberals will be supporting this bill. It is an unremarkable but much needed piece of legislation, which is absolutely uncontentious.
I want to thank the minister, her staff and staff from the directorate for their detailed briefing, which has put us in the picture on matters pertaining to this bill. I would have to say that many of these matters are matters that were never considered in any way, shape or form by me prior to the bill’s tabling and, I dare say, had never been considered by the vast majority of Canberrans.
So what does this bill do? In short, it introduces a power for the minister to exempt a regulated utility service from the operation of the Electricity Safety Act of 1971. Why would you do that? It is important in the context of the works that are going on around the tram network. As we have moved forward with this project, we have come to understand that there is a genuine need to remove the existing duplication of regulation of the electrical work undertaken as part of that job.
I am not going to lie: this is the sort of regulatory change that you can sit down and walk some people through a dozen times, and they still will not get it. I recall my wife lying next to me early on a Sunday morning, in bed, at Theodore, saying: “If you bring up that electrical safety bill again, I am leaving. I will go and walk the kelpies on my own. You are not coming with me!”
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