Page 3032 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 14 September 1993
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DENTISTS REGISTRATION (AMENDMENT) BILL 1993
Debate resumed from 26 August 1993, on motion by Mr Berry:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
MRS CARNELL (Leader of the Opposition) (8.17): Madam Speaker, we certainly should not be here tonight debating this Bill at all. The only reason that we are is the incompetency and bloody-mindedness of the Minister.
Mr Kaine: I presume that that was a compliment, Wayne.
MRS CARNELL: He probably thinks it is. This Bill, Madam Speaker, is before this house today because in the Health (Consequential Provisions) Act 1993, which we debated in this house on 23 February this year, subsection 34(1B) of the Dentists Registration Act was inadvertently repealed.
Mr Berry: A technical oversight.
MRS CARNELL: I am very pleased that the Minister said that. In fact that is exactly what he said in his speech. He said that the impact of this action was a technical oversight. Why was it a technical oversight, Madam Speaker? Think back to 23 February this year in this house. There was a rather interesting debate on that particular Bill. For those who are having a little bit of trouble remembering, that was the Bill that abolished the Board of Health and moved health back under ACT Health's control.
If you remember, the Opposition had severe difficulties with the speed with which the Minister believed the Bill should be debated. In fact the Opposition's request that it not be debated so quickly in itself was debated over a quite long period of time. Mr Humphries brought forward a motion which was debated that day. Mr Humphries's motion was:
That the Assembly notes with concern the indecent haste with which the Government is bringing forward legislation for premature debate after its introduction.
At that stage both Mr Connolly and Mr Berry made some very interesting statements. They claimed that the Opposition's complaining was mere rhetoric; that there was no substance to the debate; that the Opposition really did not know what they were talking about; that the Government had appropriately consulted on these bits of legislation. When I and others in the debate asked why the urgency, why we needed to debate these bits of fairly complicated legislation so quickly, the Minister could not answer us. In fact, even his own ACT Health bureaucrats said that there was not really any rush for this legislation. Certainly, there were no financial requirements for it to go through in February, as it did. As it turned out, as a result of pushing this legislation through as quickly as they did, they made a technical oversight. Inevitably, technical oversights will be made when legislation is rushed through this house, when the drafting is rushed, and when there is not proper consultation with the people it affects.
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