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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 6 Hansard (15 June) . . Page.. 1822 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

reflects changes in the wider community, for example, changes in society's values and technological change. The statute book needs to be updated to take account of these changes.

Second, the ACT statute book has been created over some 90 years from various sources. Drafting practices, language usage, and printing formats and styles have changed over the years. Maintaining a minimum level of consistency in presentation and cohesion between legislation coming from different sources and enacted at different times can assist improved access to law.

Third, the statue book is a complex mosaic of individual items of legislation that interact with other items of legislation (and the common law). Therefore, changes to a law often generate the need for consequential amendments in other laws. Without these consequential amendments, the interaction between individual items of legislation can become confused and lead to legal uncertainty and reduce access to the law.

As a general rule, Statue Law Amendment Bills deal with four kinds of matters. First, minor amendments proposed by government agencies to correct minor problems that come to the attention of agencies during the course of administering their legislation

Schedule 1 of the Bill before the Assembly contains such amendments. These amendments are included in schedule 1 so they can be readily identified. Schedule 1 includes amendments of the Radiation Act 1983 to improve and tighten up the law relating to exposure to ionizing radiation and the transport of radioactive materials. The amendments enable recommendations of the National Health and Medical Research Council about exposure to ionizing radiation to be given effect to.

Schedule 1 also includes amendments of the Transplantation and Anatomy Act 1978. The Act currently requires medical practitioners to carry out a clinical examination to determine the death of patients on life support systems. Since the Act was enacted, advances in medical technology have introduced more accurate and definite methods for determining the death of patients on life support. For example, it is now possible to determine more accurately the irreversible cessation of brain function in a patient on life support by radiological or other tests. However, as the Act stands, medical practitioners who are required to certify brain death must do so based on a clinical examination rather than these more accurate tests.

The amendment in Schedule 1, replaces the term 'clinical examination' with the term 'appropriate tests or tests'. The amendment will allow current medical best practice, for example tests approved by the Royal College of Physicians, to be used in ACT hospitals.

The second kind of matter in Statute Law Amendment Bills are amendments proposed by the Parliamentary Counsel's Office of Acts of 'general application' (such as the Interpretation Act 1967 and the Legislation Act 2001) and other Acts that affect the structure of the statute book. When it commences, the Legislation Act 2001 will bring many of the provisions dealing with the life cycle of legislation together in a single Act. Some of these provisions are still located in the Interpretation Act. Schedule 2 of this Bill relocates provisions from the Interpretation Act and remakes them, in updated form, as provisions of the Legislation Act.

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