Little Andrew: Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill — In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLittle Andrew: Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 16 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10278. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW LITTLE (Labour): The title and commencement are two very important aspects of the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill. My colleague Maryan Street was talking about the commencement issue and there is a real issue about the potential for this bill to come into force to amend another bill that will not yet have entered into force as an Act. So it will create this dreadful situation where the original Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 is waiting in the queue to come into force on 24 May or 25 May and this bill gets signed off this weekend goes off to the Governor-General for the Royal assent and is in effect in force but amending nothing. That just demonstrates the horrific position that the House has been put in with rushed legislation without any sense of the issue having been properly managed. That is an issue.The title of the bill is very concerning because when the bill is passed it will then be known as the Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Act 2013. I think we need to be more clever about how to abbreviate that. We could call it the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 Squared” because we have both the word “Amendment” and the year “2013” together.Hon Maryan Street: This is not a typo.ANDREW LITTLE: It could have in brackets “(This is Not a Typographical Error)”. It could be called the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 (Times Two) Amendment Bill” or the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 (Mark II) Amendment Bill”. We could of course call it the “Crown Minerals (Barbarised Information) Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill” because if there is one thing that has characterised the debate on this bill as indeed characterised the last one this House considered it is the total lack of regulatory impact information that we have had. That is another unfortunate position that this House has yet again been put into which we should not be put into. In this particular bill as we know there was a very important issue—a genuine doubt over the efficacy of one of the provisions in it clause 14. So it might be appropriate to reflect that in the title of the bill.Alternatively to reflect another deep-seated concern about this bill it might be called the “Crown Minerals (Not Taking Health and Safety or the Environment Seriously) Amendment Act 2013 Amendment Bill”. That goes to the heart of the issue that we have in this piece of legislation. It is already a pretty light-handed approach to health and safety oversight and environmental oversight when it comes to prospecting and the exploration of oil and gas and this makes it even lighter. It underscores the very deep-seated concern we have that it simply does not take that issue seriously at a time in this country’s history when workplace health and safety in particular is at the forefront of everybody’s minds. We have a disastrous record when it comes to that and this industry as much as it has come a long way in the last 20 or 30 years still has issues about health and safety. In a former capacity I have represented the families of workers at coroners’ inquests in relation to deaths that have been caused in this industry because of issues largely about fatigue and the organisation of work.So when the bill says that the Minister needs to provide some sort of oversight in this day and age we should be expecting the best possible oversight and insistence that the Minister demands world’s best practice in health and safety and world’s best practice in environmental standards. But this bill does not do that. So inserting in brackets within the title “(Not Taking Health and Safety or the Environment Seriously)” would be an apposite reflection of what in fact this bill does—or more accurately what it does not do.Another title might be the “Crown Minerals Amendment Act 2013 (Denial of Democracy in Parliament) Amendment Bill” because that is also what we have had. Yet again another piece of legislation is being rushed through the House under urgencywhen actually taking a bit of time to consider it would not have caused any harm or damage to those who have an immediate stake in it. Those are issues that ought to be given very close and serious consideration in both the title and the commencement of this bill.