Anthony Chisholm (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

Senator McKim, these are some examples of how a defect or breach will be allowed to be made. A document may contain one or more breaches of a requirement, such as an error, omission, misstatement or misdescription, and, nevertheless, be found to substantially comply with the relevant requirements. The terms used in the new provision as examples of breaches—'error', 'omission', 'misstatement' or 'misdescription'—are intended to mean the following: 'error' is intended to capture a broad range of content related defects that could be made in the document; 'omission' is intended to capture missing information in the document, including grammatical omissions and omissions of parts of names, numbers, titles, subheadings or certain sentences or meanings; 'misstatement' is intended to capture incorrect statements made in the document, including those made about the person, addressee or legislation, or statements that are correct and relevant to the person or matter but placed under incorrect headings; and 'misdescription' is intended to capture the incorrect descriptions in the document, including those made about the person, addressee, actions, facts, legislation or rights. An example of where a document might be taken to substantially comply with content requirements would include a document that includes information on review rights but under the wrong heading. It's intended that the defect may not prevent substantial compliance.