Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was not expecting the question so I do not have the exact figures here, but I think most people would accept that the Australian government are spending billions of dollars on transport and are not running away from that. We are in effect picking up the slack that the states have left, even though they are now getting every last cent of GST that was supposed to enable them to carry out their constitutional responsibilities. Sadly, they seem to be failing in this area.

The Statute Law Revision Bill (No. 2) 2006 is a fairly narrow bill. It does traverse almost the entire area of government activity. When you go through the explanatory memorandum, it is obvious that acts of parliament dealing with many portfolios are being corrected, altered, changed and varied as appropriate. The Office of Parliamentary Counsel do a very good job and I want to commend them on bringing forward this bill and having gone through all of this legislation, with all of this detail. We are very fortunate to have competent people in the Office of Parliamentary Counsel. This is an important bill. It might not appear to be a bill of great significance, but it is important that we update our legislation so that people going to the statute books of this country are able to see legislation which continues to be relevant to Australia in 2007. I commend to the bill to the chamber.

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