George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

The opposition supports the Legislative Instruments Amendment (Sunset­ting) Bill 2011. The purpose of the bill is to provide that legislative instruments unifor­mly remain in force for a period of 10 years after they are made. As we know, legislative instruments usually remain in force for 10 years after they are made and are subject to review before the end of that period. That has been the case for many years. However, the effect of the current section 50 of the Legislative Instruments Act is that instru­ments with retrospective commencement dates can sunset before that time or even sunset before they are made.

The proposed amendment addresses that anomaly by ensuring that legislative instru­ments sunset 10 years from the time of their registration on the Federal Register of Legislative Instruments rather than from the time of their coming into force. The stated intention of the amendment is to achieve the dual policy aim of allowing instruments 10 years of operation and ensuring that regu­lation is reviewed on a regular basis. As I have said, this seems an appropriate piece of legislation to remove an anomaly and it has the opposition's support.