Chauvel Charles: Legislation Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Chauvel Charles: Legislation Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 05 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7258. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 Mr Deputy Speaker in order to continue to rivet you I would like to make just a few additional comments to those that have been made by the speaker who has just resumed his seat the Attorney-General. I would like to begin by acknowledging his acknowledgment of the work done by the Regulations Review Committee in the previous term of Parliament. The recommendations I think on the basis of advice from the officials who appeared before the committee did indeed add value to the bill. 
I think in particular about the recommendations concerning Part 4 which deals with the constitution of the Parliamentary Counsel Office. The need to modernise the statute under which parliamentary counsel operate had I think become pressing. At the moment the legislation dates back to the 1920s. It was very much a case of it being timely to update that legislation in order to ensure not only that there were appropriate governance and management structures applicable to the office but also fairly rudimentary issues like legal protection for members of the office when they are performing their official duties within powers and in good faith. Just as every other person in the Public Service has that protection now it will be going forward that the members of the Parliamentary Counsel Office team have that protection as well and that is as it should be. In fact it is remarkable that it has taken Parliament nearly 100 years to confer that protection. It is also appropriate to have clarified the client status of those being advised or assisted by members of the office so as to be very clear that legal professional privilege and all the other requirements of professional conduct should apply to members of the office. They no doubt exhibit those attributes now but the law will make it clear that the duties exist. 
I want to pay tribute to the Acting Chief Parliamentary Counsel Mr Moore. He has had to step into the breach in the absence of the Chief Parliamentary Counsel on an extended basis on a secondment in the United Kingdom. I think Mr Moore has done a terrific job of stepping into the gap. Certainly he has been of great assistance to the Regulations Review Committee in the discharge of our duties to this House. Although I appreciate that sometimes select committee chairs and members will receive slightly different advice from his office on the one hand and the Regulations Review Committee on the other we are certainly striving to resolve those differences where we can and where we cannot well the reality is that that means that the committees have contestable advice on what drafting best practice is. I think that is a good thing for the committees. They are in a position to make the sorts of judgments that they should make when they do receive advice that is contestable. 
The Minister spoke about the changes that will be made by the bill in respect of the Regulations Review Committee’s jurisdiction. They are sensible changes. In terms of the definition of the types of instruments that the committee will be able to scrutinise on behalf of the House the changes are sensible changes. They broaden the ability of the committee to perform the House’s scrutiny function on its behalf and I certainly welcome them. 
 The legislation also updates the law relating to the publishing reprinting and revising of legislation. I think the most significant innovation that I would want to mention is the conferral of official status on electronic versions of Acts and other statutory instruments. That is an overdue move. It is also one to be welcomed. The status of searchable legislation on the internet on the legislation website is now clarified and it will be appropriate to use that legislation in that version and any prints that are made of it as an official version of the legislation. That makes a lot of sense given the way that we deal with legislation these days. 
Finally the issue of systematic revision is to be welcomed. I know that any member who has gone out into the lobbies and tried to look up what the law is on a particular issue knows that sometimes they have got to go to a number of different Acts of Parliament a number of different regulations. Over time the revision process will mean that we have a much more logical and coherent statute book and it is very much a reform to be welcomed. 
I want to conclude by thanking my colleagues on the Regulations Review Committee in the last term for the work they did on this bill. I also want to acknowledge not only as I said earlier the Chief Parliamentary Counsel but the other members of his team and the former Chief Parliamentary Counsel who appeared before the committee to give their views on this legislation. It is good and timely legislation. Perhaps the one regret that we might express is that it has taken so long first to be introduced and secondly to wend its way through the House. But none the less it is finally happening it is to be welcomed and I certainly commend it to the House.