Page 4341 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 30 November 1994
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LIMITATION (AMENDMENT) BILL 1994
Debate resumed from 9 November 1994, on motion by Mr Humphries:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General and Minister for Health) (12.07): Madam Speaker, the Government will not be opposing this amendment. The Limitation (Amendment) Bill 1993 was put through this Assembly at the time we were just getting prepared for what could be an adverse outcome in a High Court decision. Mr Humphries has said that there was not sufficient time for the legal profession to advise members of the community about how that legislation affected rights and obligations. The relevant part of it was part of a uniform move around Australia to regularise limitation proceedings to avoid forum shopping. I think everybody agrees that forum shopping is a bad and undesirable practice. When you introduce such a piece of legislation, inevitably you draw a line at which it commences, and some people fall on one side of the line and some fall on the other.
Mr Humphries and the Law Society raised the point that we perhaps drew that line too harshly and a number of people have had pre-existing rights cut out. There has been a criticism that there was not sufficient consultation. While we did move this fairly quickly, we have looked at the position in other States and Territories and I understand that there was not a great deal of consultation in other places. In South Australia, where the legislation was put through quite recently, it was proclaimed immediately, with no notice to the legal profession. So, what we have done, in fact, seems to be pretty much in line with what everybody did. Nonetheless, a relevant point raised is that some people have been adversely affected. We have spoken with the Law Society. They can assure us that it is only a handful of cases and that altering the line now will not cause any hardship. There is a countervailing argument about whether, having drawn the line one way, tampering with it again will cause a problem. The advice I have is that there is no problem there, so the Government will not be opposing this process.
MS SZUTY (12.09): I am pleased to see the Government supporting this private members Bill which was introduced by Mr Humphries quite recently. I would like to draw attention to the comment made by the Scrutiny of Bills Committee on this particular matter. It states, under the heading "Possible Prejudicial Retrospectivity":
The amendments that came into effect when the Limitation (Amendment) Act 1993 commenced on 30 November 1993 provided that, where a cause of action arose before that date, but proceedings had not been commenced, new rules applied. The effect of this Bill is to postpone the application of those new rules until 31 May 1994 in relation to proceedings commenced during that period of 6 months, unless the proceedings were completed before the commencement of this Bill as an Act.
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