Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

It is not a circular debate. It is called snookering when a minister’s delegate says, ‘I can’t explain.’ Mind you, I did tempt the parliamentary secretary to explain that term because he would have been the first government member in the history of this parliament to explain what the government means when it uses that term. He is rating as well as his predecessors on that one. While he is looking for an explanation of that sentence, I go to the next paragraph, which says:

Other changes are intended to achieve greater administrative tidiness, one instance of which is the proposal that exact periods of a year would no longer be required for fixing work program milestones. In addition, there are refinements to National Offshore Petroleum Safety Authority powers and functions plus machinery amendments, such as disapplying the Navigation Act 1912 and the Occupational Health and Safety (Maritime Industry) Act 1993 in relation to an offshore petroleum facility.

I wonder if the parliamentary secretary could explain what is meant by the term ‘disapplying’ and why that is occurring.