Public Safety (Public Protection Orders) Bill

I want to make a very, very brief call on this part, as it was something that obviously was debated by the Justice and Electoral Committee, and there were some changes made. The select committee recommended amending clause 2 of the bill so that provisions would come into force on a date separate to that which was originally drafted. The original drafting suggested that the Act would come into force on the day that is 1 year after the date on which the Act received the Royal assent, but the select committee instead wanted to allow provisions to come into force on a date appointed by the Governor-General by Order in Council, so that multiple Orders in Council could be made, bringing different provisions into force on different dates.

It seems that the select committee wanted to make allowances for consent processes and, I guess, the different dates that may sit around those provisions that were set out in Part 2, but still allow that any provision not brought into force earlier would come into force 1 year after the bill receives the Royal assent. That then speaks to the question I asked in Part 2. Obviously, that implies that we may have multiple residences, multiple consenting processes. The bill actually does also say that it allows for contracts to be made between the Department of Corrections and private providers. The fact that the select committee made this adjustment suggests to me that there may already be consenting processes in train; we do not know. But I would be interested to hear from the Minister whether indeed this is the case.

That is not to say it is not a sensible provision. We always try to make sure that commencement clauses are tailored to the specific needs contained within a bill, which may not be uniform, but if there is extra information it would be useful if the Minister, perhaps, shared it with the Committee at this point.