Page 3118 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 20 September 1994
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It is also interesting to note that the legislation provides for mediation processes; for the tribunal to order that mediation should take place, that is, with the consent of both parties before the tribunal. That obviously is a process which needs to be encouraged at every turn. The Minister noted the "Mediate First" campaign run by the Law Society last year. We would certainly want to remove any restrictions in legislation that might inhibit the process of making mediation available to parties and to have the court refer matters to mediation if that was deemed to be expedient in dealing with a particular issue.
Madam Speaker, as I indicated, these three Bills make those changes. The Interpretation Bill merely provides that, when the words "Administrative Appeals Tribunal" are referred to in legislation, they mean our own AAT rather than the Commonwealth one. The amendments to the Administrative Appeals (Consequential Amendments) Bill make a number of amendments to a series of pieces of legislation that facilitate in particular that code that I referred to before. The reforms are appropriate and, as I indicated, have the support of the Opposition.
MR MOORE (3.33): Madam Speaker, I rise to support the comments made by Mr Humphries and congratulate the Minister on taking these steps to improve the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. It seems to me that, whenever we get the opportunity to take steps to improve bodies such as this, it is appropriate that we take them, and having the opportunity also to adopt the work from the Federal sphere is entirely appropriate. So, I would be supporting the legislation.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General and Minister for Health) (3.33), in reply: I thank members for their support in principle. I will be moving some amendments in the detail stage of the third Bill, which I think I provided to the Opposition a day or so ago. I have just given them to Ms Szuty. They basically are minor technical matters. Since the Bill was introduced, there has been a whole range of matters passed by this Assembly. One of the problems with a Bill like this, which is a machinery appeals Bill, is that there has been a whole lot of amendments to other Acts, so the appeal points are different. I will explain all of that in detail in the detail stage.
Mr Humphries is looking surprised, and I do apologise if he has not received the amendments. When we approved them only a couple of days ago, I did note on the file, "Pass to Mr Humphries". I apologise if my system has broken down. They are, as I say, minor technical points to ensure that the Bills that have since become law or the laws that have been changed through other amending Bills - the passage only last week of all those nursing, physiotherapists and other Bills means that the appeal points are somewhat different - are tidied up.
In principle, though, the Bill is a significant reform. One of the problems with the AAT is that the original intention of the people who put the Administrative Appeals Tribunal Act through the Federal Parliament has been frustrated somewhat. The intention of the Federal Parliament, when the AAT legislation was passed, was to have a simple, user-friendly, non-lawyerised tribunal, to allow the citizen to dispute matters with government and have them resolved swiftly and quickly. Unfortunately, over the years, as
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