John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I give notice of my intention, at the giving of notices on the next sitting day, to withdraw business of the Senate notices of motion Nos 1 to 4 standing in my name for 28 March 2018, proposing the disallowance of the Broadcasting Services (Technical Planning) Guidelines (Consequential Amendments) Instrument 2017 (No. 2), the Radiocommunications (Spectrum Licence Allocation—Multi-band Auction) Determination 2017, the Retirement Savings Accounts Tax File Number approval No. 1 of 2017 and the Migration Agents (IMMI 17/047: CPD Activities, Approval of CPD Providers and CPD Provider Standards) Instrument 2017. I seek leave to make a brief statement.

Leave granted.

When these instruments were received by the parliament they had been incorrectly classified and were, therefore, incorrectly tabled as exempt from disallowance. Following correspondence with the relevant ministers, the committee concluded that the instruments were misclassified due to administrative errors and the classifications were corrected. The committee's final comments on these matters are in Delegated Legislation Monitors 15 and 16 of 2017.

The committee is concerned that such errors can hinder the effective oversight of instruments by parliament. This is because, during the period an instrument is incorrectly listed as exempt from disallowance, senators lose some or all of the 15 sitting days available to them to give a notice of motion to disallow the instrument. For this reason the Senate Regulations and Ordinances Committee gave notices of motion to disallow each of these instruments, thereby providing senators with an additional 15 sitting days to consider them. The committee is now withdrawing those motions but remains concerned about the classification of instruments generally and will continue to monitor this issue.