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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 13 Hansard (3 December) . . Page.. 4286 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

Let me take the opportunity to record the presence in the gallery of Ms Robyn Burnett, who has acted as the Territory's first full-time Discrimination Commissioner and has been very important over the last few years of her appointment in being able to effect an important refinement of the process whereby the Territory has gained benefit and experience from the application of our discrimination legislation. It has been most important that we have been able to develop these laws in an appropriate way, that we have been able to refine them, as this Assembly has done on a number of occasions to reflect in some cases new areas of discrimination that we feel ought to be outlawed, and the work of the commissioner in that process has been very important. I take the opportunity to thank Ms Burnett for her work as Discrimination Commissioner in the ACT and to note that the exercise has been a productive one in refining the ACT's position. I think we can say today, as a result of the work that both the commissioner herself and the Assembly as a whole have done, that we have perhaps the best discrimination legislation in the country, the one that most fully protects the citizens of this community.

I will be moving a minor amendment to the legislation, which I will discuss in the detail stage. I want again to thank members for their support for the legislation and express my hope that the new arrangements, although born out of the change in policy at the Commonwealth level, will produce a solid outcome for those people who are in the unfortunate position of suffering from discrimination in this community. I sincerely hope we will see a revitalisation of that process, and a chance to be able to ensure that resources are directed in the most appropriate way to benefit those people who need the protection of that legislation.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Bill agreed to in principle.

Bill, by leave, taken as a whole

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General) (10.59): I ask for leave to move the two amendments, circulated in my name, together.

Leave granted.

MR HUMPHRIES: I move:

New clause

Page 26, line 16, insert the following clause:

"Expenses

20A. (1) Notwithstanding the amendments of the Principal Act effected by this Act but subject to subsection (2), section 93 of the Principal Act as in force immediately before the

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