Belich Camilla; O'Connor GregCAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you Mr Chair. It's a pleasure to contribute to this committee stage. I didn't have the opportunity last night but I was questioning the Minister for ACC during the Budget week about the legal advice that he had received and I don't understand—or I haven't had it reported to me and I have been following this debate—the reasons that he's unable to share even a little bit of that advice with us. Obviously being the client of the legal advice it's within his ambit to do that. But I wanted to just contribute to this debate in a couple of ways: firstly by supporting my colleague Rachel Boyack's Amendment Paper for the Schedule which we are debating and secondly to look at the amendments tabled by my colleague Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan. First a question—procedurally as I understand it the two changes that he has suggested to the schedule in new Part 5 of Schedule 1AA have now been tabled separately. That's a kind of question to ask for the procedure of the committee whether that has in fact occurred and whether they will be voted on separately because I understood that was Dr Xu-Nan's intention in relation to those two particular changes. So if we could have that confirmed that would be really helpful.The second question I have is in relation to the deletion that he has suggested to page 3 lines 28 and 29. In new clause 18(2) of Schedule 1AA he has suggested and it's something that we support deleting and declared to be and … have always been lawful". Now I have been following the debate and I know the Minister has said he won't be—as I understand—supporting that particular amendment. But what I wanted to follow up with the Minister is: would he support a change to that amendment to only delete "and to have always been" in new clause 18(2) of Schedule 1AA? So the sentence would then read: "and declared to be lawful". I think that addresses some of the retrospectivity issues that have rightly been commented on by the committee so far. We know and we accept that one of the principles of good lawmaking is that retrospectivity should be avoided. That would make those payments lawful moving forward and would avoid that retrospectivity.So that is what I'm suggesting. If the Minister is mindful to accept that I would be happy to table that as an additional amendment edited slightly from what Mr Xu-Nan has put forward. As I've said we support that but understand that it's unlikely to succeed if the Minister doesn't support it. So would he support a smaller reduction to that and if not can he give us if not the exact legal advice he's received the legal advice to show that there is a realistic risk faced by the State—and we can be aware of those risks as parliamentarians—that is so great that it then outweighs the principle of this House not passing retrospective law? Because essentially that's what the Minister is asking us to do here: accept that the risk to the State of possible litigation moving forward in relation to these interest payments is such a grave risk that it should allow us to pass a law that retrospectively disallows that type of action.I think that is an important point. I'm not saying that his decision in the end might not be the correct one but I think the committee and I would appreciate some additional elucidation of the reasons for that and if in fact that is a concern or maybe it isn't outweighed whether he would agree to that slightly amended change that might be more agreeable to the Minister.CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Just before I call yes there will be two—the two questions will be dealt with so to reassure you on that."