COVID-19 Response (Management Measures) Legislation Bill

Members, the House is in committee on the COVID-19 Response (Management Measures) Legislation Bill. You’ll be aware, members, that this is a wide-ranging bill covering many principal Acts, so to enable more focused debate I want to indicate that we have a number of Ministers available to answer the questions on the amendments that they’re responsible for. I’m referring, of course, to the debate on clause 3. It would help the quality of the debate if members on all sides could, as far as possible, focus their questions for the Minister in the chair before we move on to the next Minister. The reason for that is that Ministers can only have one adviser at any one time in the Chamber, and if we mix the questions up too much, then we waste a lot of time swapping out advisers. Having said all that, I am here to adjudicate not to tell you what to do.

Point of order. Thank you, Madam Chair. Look, I just wonder if it might be helpful to the thorough examination of the various parts of the bill if you could indicate how it’s proposed that we go through the various schedules. This is an unusual bill in the sense that there’s only, I think, four clauses but a lot of schedules. It might just be helpful if we know exactly how it’s going to roll over the next however long.

Thank you for that point of order. When we are addressing the issues raised in clause 3, we will be debating the amendments to the enactments and the debates on Schedules 1 to 8. So it may be the will of the committee that we move through schedules from 1 through to 8. Thank you for that.

Point of order. I seek leave, in light of the unusual structure of the bill, for it to be divided into schedules so that each schedule be debated. I think that might make it much easier to know which Minister’s in the chair, which officials need to be here, and so on.

Well, leave is sought for that course of—just a moment, I’ll consult.

Thank you for that point of order, just to further clarify, the House is to debate in the committee stage the order in which the bill is written. Under clause 3, the schedules move from 1 through to 8. I’m proposing, and it is logical, that that is the way the debate will proceed, but thank you for that.

Now I need to be reminded of where I was. Clause 1. So we move now to clause 1. This is the debate on the title clause. The question is that clause 1 stand part.

Clause 1 Title