Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

The Statute Law Revision Bill (No. 2) 2005 continues the important exercise of correcting errors and removing expired laws from the statute book. The corrections and repeals are desirable in order to improve the quality and accuracy of Commonwealth legislation and to facilitate the publication of consolidated versions of acts.

This parliament is very well served by the Office of Parliamentary Counsel, which provides the parliament with bills that are drafted to a very high standard. The office’s commitment to the quality of the Commonwealth statute book is also evident in the fact that this bill is one that has been initiated by the Office of Parliamentary Counsel.

I commend the Office of Parliamentary Counsel for its work in preparing the bill, for being attentive to the operation of laws on the statute book and for drafting amendments to correct any identified errors. In this way, statute law revision bills prepared by the Office of Parliamentary Counsel play a key role in ensuring the statute book is accurate, accessible and effective.

The bill proposes to correct technical errors such as misspellings, punctuation errors, numbering errors and misdescriptions of text that have occurred in Commonwealth acts as a result of drafting and clerical mistakes. The bill also proposes to repeal a number of obsolete acts that have no current or future operation. I am told that none of the amendments will make any substantial changes to the law.

The bill has three schedules. Schedule 1 amends errors contained in 14 principal acts. The kinds of errors proposed for amendment in schedule 1 are of a minor and technical nature, such as incorrect spelling, punctuation or numbering. Schedule 2 amends a number of errors contained in 19 amending acts. Many of these errors are misdescribed amendments that either incorrectly describe the text to be amended or specify the wrong location for the insertion of new text.

Schedule 3 repeals a total of 27 obsolete acts. Part 1 proposes to repeal one act which is administered by the Minister for Defence. Part 2 proposes to repeal 16 acts which are administered by the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, and part 3 proposes to repeal 10 acts which are administered by the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources.

There are various commencement dates for the provisions listed in schedule 1 and schedule 2 because the commencement of each item is tied to the commencement of the provision that created the error. The effect of the commencement provisions is that the errors are taken to have been corrected immediately after the error was made. All other provisions commence on royal assent.

While none of the amendments proposed by the schedules will alter the content of the law, the bill will improve the quality and public accessibility of Commonwealth legislation.

I commend the bill to the chamber. I table the explanatory memorandum to the Statute Law Revision Bill (No. 2) 2005.

Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The opposition fully supports the Statute Law Revision Bill (No. 2) 2005. This bill is part of a continuous process to ensure that our statute books are free of errors and cleared of obsolete legislation. This bill contains no substantive policy changes. It corrects errors of a minor and technical nature and repeals legislation relating to special appropriations that are either fully spent or expired. It is a credit to our Office of Parliamentary Counsel that it takes the time periodically to examine our statutes for these kinds of problems.

As I recently noted here on another occasion, I believe that Australia is particularly well served by OPC, which manages to keep our legislation, especially the published compilations, in very good shape. This is not a trivial matter; it is a crucial requirement of the rule of law that citizens should be able to access and understand the laws of the land. Making sure that our legislation is free from mistakes and that unnecessary legislation is cleared from the books goes a long way to achieving this goal.

We have been fortunate in recent decades that information technology has actually brought Commonwealth statutes even closer to the people through SCALE, SCALEplus and now ComLaw, but that also makes it even more important that the law is as accessible in its content and form as it is to download. As more and more non-lawyers are going straight to the web to find out about our laws, legislators need to be even more conscious about maintaining statutes that can be easily understood without having to wade through out-of-date laws or wrestle with the meaning and consequence of minor and technical errors. Statute law revision bills are a part of that process.

I want to take this opportunity to compliment the staff at OPC and the other public servants who had a hand in preparing this bill. I am grateful for the painstaking and time-consuming work that has been done to improve the quality of the Commonwealth statutes. Labor is very pleased to support this small, noncontroversial but nonetheless worthy bill.

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

As is the case in an imperfect world, people make mistakes and these mistakes at times manifest themselves in various ways. Sadly, occasionally in acts of parliament the mistakes come in the form of typos, spelling errors, omissions, leftovers that should have been omitted as a result of consequent amendments, and other small nuisances.

The Statute Law Revision Bill (No. 2) 2005 has the purpose of rectifying some 80 mistakes and cancellations of acts that have been identified at this point in time in our laws. The parliament this year will consider some 128 bills, 79 that have had their genesis in 2004 or 2005 and approximately 49 from 2006. With this quantity of legislation under consideration for the good of all Australians, it is not unexpected that some minor hiccups will occur along the way.

This is not the first time I have spoken on bills of this nature and it will probably not be the last. These bills are required to ensure that our acts of parliament are as clear and as readable as was originally intended. The member for Gellibrand pointed out that many people without legal training are now logging on to obtain information with respect to the laws of Australia, and it is important that those laws be as clear and concise as possible. The errors that creep into documents are not usually found until the documents, in this case legislation, are utilised by everyday users.

This bill has been divided into three sections. Schedule 1 is designed to correct errors in what are principal acts, with the corrections to come into force from the date of the original act. Schedule 2 has the aim of correcting some misdescriptions that have occurred in amending acts, and these are errors that have occurred in the course of introducing amendments to an act. Schedule 3 enables the repeal of obsolete acts. These include the repeal of the Defence Forces Retirement Benefits Fund (Distribution of Surplus to Pensioners) Act 1976. It is, as you would be aware, Mr Deputy Speaker, a long name for an act, and it deals with a one-off pensioner payment that is long gone. It finished as long ago as 1977.

Schedule 3 also repeals some 16 acts that were once administered by the Minister for Foreign Affairs. They deal with spending on specific programs that are no longer in place, making the acts obsolete. Subsidies were given to certain consumers between 1980 and 1985 through provisions in the Liquefied Petroleum Gas (Grants) Act 1980. That grants scheme expired in 1985, so it is no longer for the parliament to retain this act on its statute books. It will be repealed under the bill currently being debated.

Schedule 1 of the Statute Law Revision Bill (No. 2) 2005 includes 26 changes. These relate to items such as inserting the number ‘51’ in the Aged Care Act 1997 to correct a misleading reference to the Constitution, removing a subsection (2) from the Australian Federal Police Act 1979 as a result of subsections (1) and (3) being repealed in an amendment in 2000, and correcting the use of the two words ‘can’ and ‘not’ and replacing them with the one word ‘cannot’ in the Crimes Act 1914. This indicates that typos and small spelling errors are still being identified in our laws—which is, I suppose, quite concerning—some 90-plus years after the laws were introduced. Schedule 2 includes changes to amending acts, including corrections to titles, such as updating a reference in the Audit (Transitional and Miscellaneous) Amendment Act 1997 to the Public Accounts Committee Act 1951 to its new name, the Public Accounts and Audit Committee Act 1951. There are 27 such modifications outlined under this bill.

As pointed out by the member for Gellibrand, I have great admiration—as does the Attorney-General—for those people who draft our laws. But those people are not perfect. Some of the matters being corrected by this legislation are mistakes and others are matters being simply updated as time goes on. Drafting bills is a mostly unseen task. For those of us who debate the bills, it seems that they magically appear and we often do not consider how long it takes to pull together the necessary clauses in what are often very intricate and complicated pieces of legislation. Wording must be clear and precise, and this often involves considerable cross-referencing and the inclusion of definitions and explanations, and often acts have to be rewritten when amendments are passed by this House. It is a taxing and thankless job.

I have had a theory for a while that, when ministers introduce new subordinate legislation by regulation, the minister ought to surrender a similar number of words of regulation. I think, as time goes on, we seem to be ever more legislated for and more regulated. I think at one stage the Department of Finance and Administration was looking at a project whereby if a department wanted to bring in a new set of regulations containing X number of clauses or X number of words, the minister enacting these extra regulations would be required to surrender a similar number of words.

Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is a very interesting discipline. Perhaps we could pay them a bonus as well.

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

The Attorney has some interesting and original ideas. Maybe that might be a good way to go. Having said that, the Statute Law Revision Bill (No. 2) 2005 is not a controversial bill, and I commend it to the House.

Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Gellibrand and the member for Fisher for their contributions—the member for Gellibrand, particularly, for her very sensible support for this measure and for the very complimentary remarks she paid to the Parliamentary Counsel, whose work I also adverted to. It is very valuable and I appreciate it. I thank the member for Fisher—who has just left—for his quite comprehensive evaluation of the bill and other positive suggestions, which I will obviously canvass with colleagues from time to time.

The first statute law revision bill was introduced into the Commonwealth parliament in 1981. This is of course a traditional measure. It continues the important exercises of clearing our statute book of minor technical errors and removing obsolete acts. All of the issues have been well canvassed during the debate. I thank the chamber for its indication of support.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Ordered that the bill be reported to the House without amendment.