Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Minister for Community Services) Share this | Hansard source

We have taken on the comments by the Law Council, and the advice that we have received is that that is not correct. The reason that the precedent I quoted exists is to put clarity behind that. This is the modern way of everybody who writes the legislation for this place. We may not have time to go through different pieces of legislation but I am assured that the reason for that is that it is the way the legislation is currently crafted in any of these matters—and has been for a number of years.

In relation to the terms used beforehand, I am not sure of the history of the change. When I first made a speech in here and reflected on what we were doing I used the words, ‘We will compensate on just terms.’ We have provided a precedent of a case—’What would happen if you put this word in here?’—and the court, which will be making any judgement on this matter, found that ‘reasonable compensation’ means that. I am sorry that I cannot go into the history of that but it is not just that in this case somebody said, ‘I know; we’ll use this term and not this one.’ This is the normal term which has been used for some time in drafting of this type.

The government have accepted the advice from the drafting people on this matter. This discussion has been had. It is not something that applies just to this; it has been used in all legislation for probably nine or 10 years. For those reasons the government accepted the advice of our legal section in this regard.