Statutes Amendment Bill (No 5)

I wish to speak on Supplementary Order Paper 3, which addresses the Child Support Act and the changes proposed. When I look at the proposed Supplementary Order Paper, I have to ask the Minister, the Hon Clayton Cosgrove, why we are dealing with this issue at this stage in a Supplementary Order Paper when an amendment to the Child Support Act was sent to a select committee just last week, with no time limit given, so we have the usual 6 months in which to deal with it. If these issues were so urgent, why were they not included in the bill sent to the select committee, with a time limit, in order for the normal processes to be observed?

When we look at the proposed changes, we see that the Minister is talking about clarifying and correcting. So on the one hand we have an incompetent Government not able to put through legislation that does not require clarifying or correcting, but also we have a lazy Government that is determined to avoid the normal democratic processes by bringing in a Supplementary Order Paper to make changes to a bill that is already going through the democratic process at the select committee, thereby avoiding public scrutiny and public input into those changes. The public expected more from this Government despite the fact that its members spent the whole election campaign debating National Party policies. They have been back-pedalling ever since, and we have had Minister after Minister, obviously not on top of his or her portfolio, answering questions about incompetence in those portfolios and blaming staff when things go wrong. Here we have the classic example of a lazy and incompetent Minister trying to shove through alterations that could have been dealt with, if he had just got his organisation in order, by putting in place a sensible alteration through the existing processes.

New Part 3AA agreed to.

Part 3A agreed to.

Part 4 agreed to.

Part 5 agreed to.

Part 5A agreed to.

Part 6 agreed to.

Part 7 Dairy Industry Restructuring Act 2001