Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Link to 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The acts to be repealed are self-evidently obsolete and have been superseded by other legislation.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.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to 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 The retention of outdated, complex and unclear legislative provisions makes it more difficult for Australians to come to grips with how the law applies to them, their businesses, their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.

Laurie Ferguson (Reid, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs and Settlement Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the members for their contribution to the debate on the Statute Law Revision Bill 2009. I am encouraged to see that the tradition of bipartisan support for these bills continues. This government is proud to continue its support of statute law revision bills. This is the second such bill we have introduced during our term in government, reflecting the importance we place on updating Commonwealth legislation and improving its quality and accessibility.

While this bill does not change the substance of the law, it is an important responsibility of any government to carry out the passage of statute law revision bills. Minor drafting and clerical errors are bound to find their way into legislation, given the volume of bills passing through the parliament. The regular review of legislation by the Office of Parliamentary Counsel enables the prompt correction of these errors. These bills also remove from the statute book expired laws.

This is in line with the government’s recently adopted strategic framework for access to justice, which arose out of a report by my department’s Access to Justice Taskforce. One of the five justice principles contained in the framework is accessibility: justice initiatives should reduce the net complexity of the justice system. The removal of errors and obsolete legislation through the Statute Law Revision Bill is one means by which parliament can improve the accessibility of the law consistent with that strategic framework. These amendments also ensure that our laws reflect contemporary social standards by amending statutes containing gender-specific language to produce a statute book that is gender neutral and more inclusive.

These bills are prepared on the initiative of the Office of Parliamentary Counsel. I commend the office for the quality of its work in ensuring that our statute book remains as accurate and effective as it can possibly be.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

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