Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I present the 13th report and Alert Digest No. 13 of the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills.

Ordered that the report be printed.

Now that there is agreement that the report be printed so everyone can read it, I now move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

I thank the secretariat and the legal advisor on the quite brilliant work they do in assisting the Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills. I reiterate what a professional job the committee secretariat and the legal advisor Mr Leighton McDonald do in looking through so many bits of legislation that come before this parliament and in looking at them to determine if they do unduly trespass on the personal rights and liberties of Australians, whether they have an inappropriate delegation of legislative power, whether they unduly restrict the rights of citizens, whether they give too much discretionary power to delegation of legislative power or whether there is retrospective application. These are the sorts of things that the committee looks at.

The committee in its report today highlights a number of bills. The committee always acts in a very non-partisan way. We do not get into the rights and wrongs of the bill itself but simply alert other senators to provisions of bills that might impinge upon the rights that we have as Australian citizens and which the Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills is specifically asked to look at. I urge all senators to read the report. I will briefly mention a couple of the matters that are referred to in the report.

The Fair Entitlements Guarantee Bill 2012 has a delegation of legislative power. It is proposed in the bill to cover the costs associated with the payment of advances to former employees whose employer becomes bankrupt. The appropriation could also apply to any additional schemes introduced, which can be done by regulation. The explanatory memorandum argues that a standing appropriation is necessary because the volume of payments is unknown and it will provide certainty. The committee noted that argument in the explanatory memorandum, but went back to the government to seek advice on whether the government thought a sunset clause should be considered, especially as new schemes can be introduced.

Similarly, in the Fair Work Amendment (Transfer of Business) Bill 2012, the committee alerts the Senate to proposed subsection 768CA, which would enable the making of regulations that may modify the provisions of this act or the transitional act. So this act is giving power to the regulatory process; that is, the primary legislation can be amended simply by regulations. That is regrettably all too common in legislation. It is referred to as the Henry VIII clause for the reason that Henry VIII used to have a parliament but he provided in it that laws of parliament could be amended by regulation. Not that my history of how the government worked in those days is all that good—