Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Statute Law Revision Bill 2009. The coalition fully supports the passage of this bill. Bills of this nature are regarded as an essential tool in the process of keeping the Commonwealth statute books accurate and up to date. The coalition supports the view mentioned by the Attorney-General in his second reading speech that this parliament has had a strong tradition of passing statute law revision bills in a bipartisan manner since they were introduced by the Fraser government in 1981. In the second reading speech to the Statute Law Revision Bill 1981, the then Attorney-General Senator Durack said:

The Government has decided to introduce Statute Law Revision Bills into the Parliament on a regular basis, at least once in each year and, if required, once in each sitting. This will enable the prompt correction of mistakes and errors and removal from the statute book of expired laws.

The acts to be repealed are self-evidently obsolete and have been superseded by other legislation. Of the acts to be amended, most of the proposals relate to spelling, grammatical and technical errors and to the removal of gender-specific language.

Schedule 1 of the bill contains amendments to 33 principal acts. Schedule 2 amends 22 amending acts. Schedule 3 repeals five acts. The remainder of the bill makes bulk amendments with respect to spelling and capitalisation. A large number of Commonwealth acts are amended to ensure consistency of language used to describe the internet and internet related technology. The corrections and repeals are desirable in order to improve the quality of the text of Commonwealth legislation and, in particular, to facilitate the publication of consolidated versions of acts by the Attorney-General’s Department and by private publishers of legislation. None of the corrections make any changes to the substance of the law. I commend this bill to the House.

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