Page 1701 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 30 April 1991
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CRIMES (AMENDMENT) BILL 1991
Debate resumed from 18 April 1991, on motion by Mr Collaery:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
MR CONNOLLY (9.00): Mr Speaker, this is a matter which will probably excite far less debate than the vexed question of ministerial travel - - -
Mr Wood: Not if they put their foot in it again.
MR CONNOLLY: As Mr Wood says, unless the Government puts its foot in it again - and one can never tell.
Mr Speaker, I am pleased to say that the Opposition will be supporting this Bill. It is only a short Bill, which implements a short report of the Community Law Reform Committee. Nonetheless, it is worthy of some note, because this is the first report of the ACT Community Law Reform Committee to be implemented. We are setting something of a world record for implementing law reform committee reports. Certainly, anyone who has worked in the Commonwealth is familiar with it often taking some years - in some cases, decades - to implement Australian Law Reform Commission reports. This Law Reform Committee report was tabled on 17 April, and the Bill implementing it was tabled on 18 April. This is an extraordinary record, for which I commend the Government. I suspect that, as the committee gets into more complex and difficult areas of law, there will, quite properly, be a slowing down in that process. Nonetheless, it is good to see that, on this fairly short and sharp report on a couple of minor matters, there has been a short and sharp response from the Government.
The Opposition has previously indicated, but I will do so again, that it supports the process of the Community Law Reform Committee. This afternoon, in debate on another matter, the Chief Minister again was heard to make some rumblings that the Opposition never agrees with anything that the Government ever does and never says anything positive about anything, anywhere, anytime. I am, of course, wary of controversy over rulings today, so I will not say that that is an untruth, but it is clearly a statement that bears little relationship to the facts.
Repeatedly, on matters like this and on the legislative program generally, we have not sought to be obstructive and we have given support where it is due. This is clearly a matter where support is due. From the Opposition's point of view, one of the most pleasing things about the process of the Community Law Reform Committee is that it is a committee that, while having a high level of legal expertise amongst its membership - and that goes without
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