David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

This is the kind of bill we all live for! The Statute Law Amendment (Prescribed Forms and Other Updates) Bill 2023 is why we spent so much collective effort to find ourselves in the Senate! It was to work our way through the Statute Law Amendment (Prescribed Forms and Other Updates) Bill 2023. This bill amends some 85 Commonwealth acts to enhance administration and promote consistency across the statute book. Schedule 1 changes references in 33 acts to require regulations to specify information required rather than referring to the form provided by the regulations. This is a sensible change which introduces a moderate but necessary amount of flexibility. Indeed, to quote the Attorney, in one of the more memorable phrases from a second reading speech:

These amendments will ensure well-targeted requirements will apply, taking into account the best modern practices available in the relevant circumstances. They will ensure there is still oversight of the information to be provided while enabling flexibility in updating and improving forms.

The bill also makes changes to legislation, including the National Health and Medical Research Council Act 1992, to specify that publication of information is no longer required to be in a form prescribed in the regulations but will just be published on the website.

Schedule 2 updates language relating to disability in a number of acts. I've got to say this is the change that I think is perhaps most important in the bill, because it removes the current, offensive use of 'handicapped' and 'handicap' in the bill. Unfortunately, because it's still in the veterans space, it replaces it with the phrases 'incapacitated' and 'incapacity', and I think we all have an obligation in this place to improve that language. I know it's probably beyond the scope of this bill, because it requires some substantive changes within the veterans statute, but it's something we should put on the agenda to fix. After we do this and remove, quite appropriately, reference to 'handicapped' across the statute book—an important change—I think we then have an obligation to revisit some of the language in the veterans space. It's a matter my office will raise with the minister to seek to advance. I'm advised that those changes are a result of work from Economic Justice Australia and its really important August 2022 research report 'Handicapped': use of outdated terminology in social security law and policy, and I commend the report to the Senate and to anyone who hasn't read it. It's important and useful work, and it was implemented not long after the report was delivered.

Schedule 3 updates references to certain NT acts based on changes in how those are referred to. Schedules 4 to 6 make various technical corrections and repeal some obsolete bills, including the Wool Privatisation Act, which I know the minister has been concerned remains on the statute books. You will be pleased to know that at the end of this it will be removed from the statute books.

I want to thank those, largely in the AG's Department, who have taken the time to identify and escalate these corrections and for making the laws clearer. I commenced this in a lighthearted way, but it must be bloody hard work. It must be genuinely hard work—not exactly glorious work but important work—to go through and tidy up the statute book, and the Greens support the bill and commend it to the Senate.