Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 4 Hansard (29 March) . . Page.. 1056 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

A meeting of chairs and deputy chairs of Australian scrutiny of primary and delegated legislation committees met in Darwin on 14 and 15 February this year. It was hosted by the Northern Territory Subordinate Legislation Publications Committee. We enjoyed their hospitality very much. Mr Speaker, the meeting was attended by representatives of scrutiny committees from Australian States and Territories, except for the Australian Senate, which was sitting at the time and which was represented by the Secretary of the Standing Committee on Scrutiny Appeals.

Mr Speaker, essentially the resolutions that were agreed at the conference were to establish a formal system of national scrutiny of national scheme legislation. The meeting defined NSL - national scheme legislation - as any legislation which is enacted or made, or proposed to be enacted or made, in more than one Australian jurisdiction as a result of intergovernmental agreement. There were divergent views at the meeting but there was more agreement than disagreement. I will not go through all the resolutions - they are there for members to read in the report - but 2.1.(b) states that the conference agreed to:

In essence, the meeting considered the issue of national scheme legislation and the lack of prior opportunity for scrutiny. National scheme legislation can be uniform, consistent or template legislation. Uniform or consistent legislation is copy legislation, where a jurisdiction may copy legislation from another jurisdiction in the interests of having uniformity across the States. However, uniform or consistent legislation is not dependent on the legislation from another jurisdiction, nor is there a total commitment to total uniformity.

Template legislation is where a jurisdiction enacts legislation which is dependent upon legislation from another jurisdiction. It may say, for example, such and such an activity is governed by the provisions in such and such an Act from such and such a State. This means that, when changes are made in the original jurisdiction's legislation through amendments passed in its parliament, those changes are automatically binding in other jurisdictions. The dangers here are that rules in one jurisdiction are governed by the citizens of another.

It is doubly so when the application of subordinate legislation comes into play. Subordinate legislation need not be passed through debate in a parliament. It is not always the case that provisions are disallowable. There is a movement away from template legislation. This became obvious at the meeting in Darwin.

I wish to acknowledge the support in Darwin of Mr Duncan, who was the committee secretary at the time, and also Mr Peter Bayne, who is a legal adviser.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .