Page 3571 - Week 09 - Thursday, 23 August 2018
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We will support amendment No 6, which removes from the executive the power to prescribe penalties by regulation, which we all know is a no-no. The scrutiny of bills committee has spoken about this at length on a number of occasions, and I am grateful that the government has acquiesced in this. Laws that carry penalties should rightly be prescribed in acts and not in regulations, and this amendment responds directly to the comments of the scrutiny of bills committee. I commend the amendments to the Assembly.
Amendments agreed to.
Clause 146, as amended, agreed to.
New clause 146A.
MS FITZHARRIS (Yerrabi—Minister for Health and Wellbeing, Minister for Transport and City Services and Minister for Higher Education, Training and Research) (4.17): I move amendment No 7 circulated in my name which inserts a new clause 146A [see schedule 1 at page 3583].
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (4.17): This was also a suggestion from the Liberal opposition and we will support this amendment. It requires the minister to review the operation of the act after five years. Inevitably, legislators are not able to think of every possibility when they develop new legislation. Unintended consequences can emerge, and a review gives an opportunity to iron out any of these issues. I gave an earlier example in the debate of a matter that could be reviewed: that of restricting the two non-vet members of the board to being residents of the ACT. I commend the amendment to the Assembly.
Amendment agreed to.
New clause 146A agreed to.
Remainder of bill, by leave, taken as a whole.
MS FITZHARRIS (Yerrabi—Minister for Health and Wellbeing, Minister for Transport and City Services and Minister for Higher Education, Training and Research) (4.18): I move amendment No 8 circulated in my name [see schedule 1 at page 3583].
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (4.19): The Liberal opposition will support this amendment, which simply provides a definition of a “declared professional body”. A caution, though, it creates something of a circular argument in which the minister must consult with a declared professional body but the minister is also the one responsible for making a declaration in the first place. Nonetheless, we need a mechanism, the only alternative of which is to name relevant bodies in the act or in regulations. Perhaps this also is a matter for review in five years.
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