Statutes Amendment Bill

Members, we come now to Part 8. Part 8 is the debate on clauses 36 and 37, “Amendment to Conservation Amendment Act 1996”. The question is that Part 8 stand part.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a very short question for the Minister on this part. My understanding of Part 8 is that the replacement sections we’re looking at in clause 37 are already in existence in the current legislation and this part is just a tweaking of the numbering. But based on what was in the introduction section, what did pique my interest is that this section has not gone live because it requires an Order in Council, but everything else in this Act has gone live almost 30 years ago in 1996. I was just curious, with this update, is there an intention by the Minister or by the Government to potentially put through an Order in Council to make it happen?

Thank you, Madam Chair. My job, or my role, in this is not about the implementation of things but rather fixing an error where we’ve got two parts that are numbered the same.

It’s good to see officials here who are able to help the Minister out if she doesn’t have the details at her fingertips, and I can perfectly understand why that’s the case here. The question as to why we’re amending an amendment Act is actually really relevant. The other thing is this: it strikes me that the substance of these sections are exactly the same; no person should act as a sports fishing guide; a person must not act as a sports fishing guide unless they hold a current sports fishing guide licence; unless he or she holds a current sports fishing guide licence.

I’m perplexed as to why we are—because all this is doing is updating wording, which is actually a revision task rather than a statute amendment task. We’re doing a really odd thing, which is amending an amendment Act. One question: why couldn’t we just use a revision Act if we just want to modernise language. But the other one is: why aren’t we just amending the Conservation Act? If we wanted to make it an offence to not have a sports fishing guide licence or to use a gaff on freshwater fish, all of which is fine by me, then why aren’t we just amending the Conservation Act itself? I see you’ve got some advice here, so it would be useful to know that.

These are minor, technical, and non-controversial amendments. We’re not going into amend whole entire sections. The whole point of trying to get cross-party support on these statute amendment bills is because of the minor technical and non-controversial nature of them. We are renumbering clauses.

Part 8 agreed to.

Part 9 Amendments to Coroners Act 2006