Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you Madam Chair. Remaining in Part 3 of the proposed legislation under the heading of Attorney-General's consents" at clause 34 it's made pretty clear that the consent of the Attorney-General is required to overturn the presumption in clause 34(1) that "No charging document may be filed against any person" etc. But the form of the Attorney-General consent isn't actually specified so it's not clear to me although I would hope that I would know the answer instinctively that such consent must be in writing. But I think none the less it's worth canvassing for the purpose of recording for posterity that such written consent would in fact be required if that's to be relied upon.The reason I think that that's important is that for evidential purposes if consent on which so much hinges under this section is to be given then we need to have some sort of evidence of that fact but also as to timing because the timing of such consent becomes relevant under clause 34(2) where we talk about whether or not the consent of the Attorney-General has yet been obtained under subclause (1). So the timing as well as the fact of such consent is important and without that we would be left perhaps dealing with someone accused of committing an offence under this legislation saying that they had a belief that the Attorney-General had consented perhaps on the basis of an in-person discussion or correspondence and then we'd be left with the thorny question of whether honest opinion was sufficient to prove the belief of such consent or whether that person would have to be acting reasonably in holding such belief. So that was one point on which I think some clarification might be helpful. I can sense that others agree with me on that.As for clause 34 I think there's a little anomaly. I anticipate a rebuke from the Minister that this was not picked up by me among others as a member of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee but there's a slight logical anomaly in that clause 35(3)—"The Secretary may approve a form for the purposes of section 14 or 23." Yet under clause 35(1) "An application under section 14 or 23 must—(a) be in the form approved by the Secretary". So we've perhaps inadvertently ended up with a regime where the person must make an application in accordance with a form approved by the Secretary and yet the Secretary himself or herself may have not decided to approve such a form because of the words of subclause (3) which used the word "may" which is not obligatory of course. So if that point could be addressed that would be a weight off all of our minds I'm sure.Now as for clause 37—I'd like to preface my remarks on this with an apology in advance to the stenographers. It simply relates to the fact that there are appeals that can be made to the District Court if certain conditions are met. They are important in themselves so I'll state for the record that these are under subclause (1) "(a) to refuse to register the person as a broker: (b) to impose a condition on the person's registration: (c) to cancel the person's registration."The syntax of that subclause actually has a succession of colons rather than semicolons and there are no words to indicate whether all those conditions must be met or one of them alone. I think the answer is probably that one ground alone would be sufficient basis for an appeal but the legislation does not say that. So logically the options are "and" or "or" or "and" and "or" which would be rendered as "and/or". If either the Minister or Sir Bernard Woolley would be able to give some help with that that would perhaps be very helpful.Later on in that same clause we hear about the District Court having the ability to allow a further period of time for an appeal but a set of criteria or circumstances under which such further period may be granted is not specified. So there's a bit of a lack of clarity there that would perhaps be dangerous to the changes of someone who was prosecuted under this legislation. [Bell rung]CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Chris Penk.CHRIS PENK: Under clause 39 now—[Interruption] I'm grateful for the opportunity to continue to talk about this bill. With relation to "Disclosure of information to overseas authority" members will of course realise that the secretary may disclose any information held by the secretary to an overseas authority for the purpose of assisting the authority to carry out its functions etc. Again the same potential objection might be raised in relation to the fact that it doesn't specify whether the regulation or monitoring of brokering activity can independently exist from the prevention detection investigation prosecution or punishment etc.But I think the more important point in terms of how this might actually practically be applied is that the secretary has the discretion to disclose that information and that's a lot of power to be held by one person acting at his or her discretion. There are it's true to note a number of different circumstances in which it may be disclosed. But I wonder if given the importance of the legislation which at its heart is to provide information to another overseas sovereign power is such that we should require the secretary to do so if certain conditions are met or to say that they may accept that in certain situations they should not be required to.So I think the importance of this really relates to the fact that the definition of "overseas authority" is so broad. Within clause 39 itself it's said to be "an overseas agency body or person." "Person" of course has a very broad meaning within the law generally and within this legislation no less so because it can mean either of course a natural person or a legal person—that might be a sovereign State or a body corporate whether a company or perhaps a trust or some other mechanism as that.So perhaps it might be said that there is some room for clarification or tightening of those criteria there. I think with those comments I perhaps look forward to any comments that the Minister in the chair the Hon Ron Mark might make on those."