Injury Prevention, Rehabilitation,and Compensation Amendment Bill

Some confusion has arisen over a provision to do with the actual workings of the bill. The Minister has tabled the necessary parts to the bill for members to look at, but members consider that that is not sufficient. They have therefore sought your ruling on this particular aspect of the legislation.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am just seeking some guidance from you. When we were debating this issue, the part of the bill that specifically referred to section 75A of the Customs and Excise Act was identified as having been repealed. When I went to that section in this volume of the statute book from the Noes lobby, which has been annotated until 1 January 2003, it became clear that no reference to a section 75A was contained in that volume. I then sought assistance from the Minister, who sought assistance from the officials, and she was then able to separately table section 75A relating to the clause in question. The difficulty that my colleagues and I now find ourselves in is in respect of the reliability of those statutes held in the lobbies when we are debating quite detailed issues—such as the clauses brought about by way of repeal and amendment in the bills before the House. Your assistance on resolving that issue would be greatly appreciated.

Mr Power did bring this matter to my attention. I sought advice from the officials, and they were able to provide me with a copy of the legislation, including section 75A of the Customs and Excise Act. I have also provided the copy of the legislation from the Government caucus room, which is indeed correctly annotated. So although there is obviously some mistake in the annotation of the statute book held in the Opposition lobby, I have at least two copies of the correctly annotated amendments that were made to the Customs and Excise Act. I have also laid a copy of those on the Table of the House.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: I thank members for their contributions. Hard copies of statutes are annotated from time to time. If there is an error in a particular volume, it is unfortunate, and it will be investigated, but members have had notice of this Committee stage since Thursday and have had an opportunity to conduct research. There is no reason that the Committee stage cannot continue.

In Committee