Page 3434 - Week 11 - Thursday, 19 September 2013

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MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Minister for Workplace Safety and Industrial Relations and Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development) (10.19): I move:

That this bill be agreed to in principle.

The Statute Law Amendment Bill 2013 (No 2) makes statute law revision amendments to ACT legislation under guidelines for the technical amendments program approved by the government. The program provides for amendments that are minor or technical and non-controversial in nature. They are generally insufficiently important to justify the presentation of separate legislation in each case and may be inappropriate to make as editorial amendments in the process of republishing legislation under the Legislation Act 2001. The program is implemented by presenting a statute law amendment bill such as this in each sitting of the Legislative Assembly.

Statute law amendment bills provide an important and useful mode for continually modernising the statute book. This statute law amendment bill deals with three kinds of matters. Schedule 1 provides for minor non-controversial amendments proposed by a government agency. Schedule 2 contains amendments to the Legislation Act proposed by Parliamentary Counsel. Schedule 3 contains technical amendments proposed by the Parliamentary Counsel to correct minor typographical or clerical errors. The bill contains a large number of amendments with detailed explanatory notes; so I will only briefly highlight a couple of the elements of the bill.

Schedule 1 of the bill amends the Education and Care Services National Law (ACT) 2011 to bring the ACT law into line with amendments made in Victoria to the education and care services national law set out in the Education and Care Services National Law Act 2010 of Victoria. Under the ACT act, section 6, any amendments passed in Victoria to the national law must be presented to the ACT Legislative Assembly within six sitting days and may be disallowed by the Assembly. Amendments made to the national law in 2011 by the Children’s Services Amendment Act 2011 of Victoria were not tabled in the Assembly and so were not taken to be part of the national law as it applies in the ACT. A technical amendment has been made to the ACT act to ensure that the Victorian amendments are included in the national law as it applies in the ACT.

Schedule 1 of the bill also amends the Health Act 1993, section 59, to include eligible midwives as a class of health practitioner that may be considered by the scope of the clinical practice committee for suitability to be credentialed. The provision currently covers doctors and dentists only. Section 59 sets out the functions of the committee including whether or not to credential a health practitioner and the terms on which the practitioner is credentialed. The committee assesses suitability based on the health practitioner’s qualifications, experience, skill or other professional attributes.

Madam Speaker, the Health Act 1993 is also amended in schedule 1 to relocate provisions about pharmacy ownership and premises from part 9 of the act to new part 3D in the Public Health Act 1997. This is a logical approach to assist legislation users because community pharmacies are now regulated under the Public Health Act 1997.


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