Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to have an opportunity to make some initial comments on the Acts and Instruments (Framework Reform) Bill. The issues contained within this bill go to some of the fundamentals of statutory interpretation and law-making powers, including the management of instruments. As a start, there will be a change of name to one of the acts that we in this place will surely see when we all read our statutes as they come before us–the Legislative Instruments Act will become the Legislation Act. There will be a new category of notifiable instruments, there will be management of a central Federal Register of Legislation and the bill also sets out what legislation will comprise that register.

I want to mention the quality of our parliamentary counsel and the quality of Australian drafting in general. There is a reason why Australian legal drafting has formed the basis of so many jurisdictions around the world. If you open the competition law provisions of the Malaysian communications regulator, the SKMM, you will see the telecommunications specific access provisions modelled on part 11(c) of our trade practices law, now known as the Competition and Consumer Act. We in Australia as both practitioners and law-makers reflect in drafting what we have worked with. On previous occasions in this place I have mentioned the Australian contribution towards drafting competition law in Hong Kong. That was drafted by Australian practitioners. We have a reputation for plain-English drafting, a reputation for accuracy and also a reputation for enabling our statutes to be interpreted in a very precise and a very competent way.

I wholeheartedly support the comments made by the shadow Attorney-General, and would like to point out a couple of items that I think would be instructive at this point. First, I note the statutory review which was conducted and forms the basis—

See this speech in context