Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I speak in support of the Statute Law Revision Bill 2009. The Attorney-General in his second reading speech described this as housekeeping work. He is correct. The retention of outdated, complex and unclear legislative provisions makes it more difficult for Australians to come to grips with how the law applies to them, their businesses, their family life and their community. Certainly the provisions we are changing here do not have the beauty and elegance of the King James Bible, but, to take the religious analogy even further and paraphrase St Paul for the 21st century, everyone makes mistakes, and certainly the legislative drafters have made some mistakes in those provisions.

The shadow minister outlined the number of pieces of legislation, the principal acts and some of the obsolete acts, but I just want to point out a couple of them to show for the purposes of the record why we are doing this, so that anyone who might be listening to this broadcast or who might be reading the Hansard can understand why we are doing this. We are not making any controversial changes. We are not changing much of the substance of any legislation, but it is important for them to understand what we are doing.

For example, in the Banking Act 1959, we are renumbering the subsections. We are making some consistency in the Commonwealth Electoral Act in the term ‘ballot paper’. The Customs Tariff Act, strangely enough, has the numeral ‘1’ where it should be ‘i’ in the word ‘preparations’. There are other changes. For example, in the Defence Force Discipline Act, there is a reference to ‘the a court martial’. The Family Law Act, with which I was very familiar when I was practising as a lawyer, has a missing semicolon after the word ‘information’ in section 12G(2)(a), and there is a missing parenthesis in the First Home Saver Accounts Act 2008. There is a double ‘the’ in the Offshore Petroleum Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Act 2008. We have already repealed some sections of the Social Security and Veterans’ Affairs Legislation Amendment Act. There is an extra ‘s’ in the Tax Laws Amendment (Repeal of Inoperative Provisions) Act 2006.

I just wanted to outline a few of those to show the Australian public why we are doing this, to show that it is housekeeping. We are not making major changes but we are ensuring that where mistakes have been made they are being corrected, and we are also ensuring that there are gender-neutral provisions in legislation. There is also a change where we have—as I would describe it—‘decapitalised’ the ‘I’ in ‘internet’, ensuring that the words ‘internet protocol’ no longer start with the capital letters ‘I’ and ‘P’. They are minor changes but they are important to make sure that the law is consistent and no longer obsolete and that, where there are redundancies and a need to correct the legislative record, this is done. It is done in a bipartisan way. It is to the benefit of all us to ensure that the law is not an ass, that it is reformist, applicable and useful to all us. Anything that makes the law more utilitarian, appropriate and contemporary is worthy of support, and I am glad that the opposition have supported it. I commend the legislation to the House.

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