Andrew Murray (WA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I must say from a purely policy perspective I have been a bit concerned at the direction in which compensation arguments have gone and I hope that if the law ever gets rewritten following the election this issue will be better dealt with than at present. I have always rather liked the Australian Constitution’s phrase of ‘compensation on just terms’. I have found ‘fair’ as a word in law quite difficult to use with respect to compensation, as is the word ‘full’, because the question is: when is it full, or when is it fair? These become difficult issues. Frankly, it would have been better if ‘compensation’ had merely been left without a qualifying adjective so it could be developed under jurisprudence in terms of administrative law. But that is a problem that people better qualified than I in the law can remark on at length.

The point I want to make with respect to the problem the amendments are trying to fix is that the issue of compensation is not resolved by the government’s legislation. The opposition’s amendments are trying to address a problem which exists in the starting legislation. I do not think the determination of compensation is going to be as easy as people think, either under the government’s proposals or under the opposition’s.