Crown Minerals Amendment Bill

Members, we come now to our final debate: clause 2. This is the debate on the Minister for Resources’ amendment to clause 2, set out on Amendment Paper 343.

Thank you, Madam Chair. In clause 2, the commencement date, there’s a very interesting change that has happened between the Act; the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill that came to the House, went through select committee; and this Amendment Paper that landed. In clause 2, the commencement was the Act came into force on the day after Royal assent—“However, the following sections come into force on 1 July 2025”. Now, clearly, that date has been missed—and that’s not the subject of my question to the Minister—because the change in the Amendment Paper that we’ve got before us is: “However, the following sections come into force on a single date set by Order in Council:”.

So my question for the Minister is why we’ve gone from having a date defined in the statute that could have just been updated to reflect the passage of time that this legislation is now going through the House—why we’re now going to a statutory instrument in the form of an Order in Council? Why are we going to secondary legislation? This is atypical for the way to set commencement of legislation, and, obviously, a conscious decision that has been made by the Minister in bringing this Amendment Paper to the House.

Now, given that there hasn’t been any chance to look at this at any other point since now, it is quite a fundamental shift, and one, I think, that the House should debate and understand why it is—the date is immaterial to us. Obviously, the date has to shift. There’s been a huge delay with this legislation. It’s been knocking around for around seven or eight months while the Minister had his officials talking to the oil and gas industry. But what we don’t know is why it is we’re now using a statutory instrument, why it is we’re using secondary legislation in the form of an Order in Council, to set that date. Why aren’t we just defining that date in the Amendment Paper that we have before us?

Thank you, Mr Chair. Another change with the commencement clause is that clauses 44 and 45 of Part 6 of Schedule 1 also come into force on this single date, rather than the more generic 1 January date. Clauses 44 and 45 of the Schedule relate to pre-existing applications and existing tier 2 permits becoming tier 3 permits. I note that the Minister didn’t answer my question on that in Part 3 of the debate. But why is it that only clauses 44 and 45 of the Schedule need to come into force by Order in Council and not the other provisions in the Schedule?

Here was I, just going to get—

Hon Dr Megan Woods: You were trying to get off from speaking on this bill!

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: Yeah. I do want to query something, and it just goes to this business that my colleague Megan Woods spoke about, and that is the Act coming into force using an Order in Council, which is what is set out here.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: It’s highly unusual.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: It is unusual. In the normal progress of this bill, we would normally expect that with the committee stage today—and we think we’ll be here debating this well until 10 o’clock, won’t we?

Francisco Hernandez: 1 a.m.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: Ha, ha! But we are going to keep on, and then it’s a members’ day tomorrow, so this bill is going to perhaps reappear for its third reading on Thursday of this week. Maybe it won’t make it for its third reading until the next sitting block, and, ordinarily, we would think that if something was going through the House and it was going to pass into law, it would simply go to the Governor-General a few days after that. That’s just a fairly regular process for the legislation that went through the House this week. We’d expect it to be signed off by the Governor-General within a week or two—no worries. So why an Order in Council?

What is the reason for delaying the start of this Act—that can be the only reason for it. The Act can’t come into effect any sooner than the Royal assent. It’s not law until the Royal assent is given, so why the potential delay? What’s going on, and is the Minister concerned that there is yet another problem sitting in here that he’s going to need to fix up at some stage? Is he just giving himself a little bit of time so that if absolutely necessary, something can be fixed?

Now, it can’t be recommitted to the House, but we’re just deeply concerned that the Minister is just kind of playing jiggery-pokery with the House here. I want to understand—

Grant McCallum: “Jiggery-pokery”—what does that mean?

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: Jiggery-pokery—it means jiggery-pokery. Careful what you’re opening yourself up to there, Mr McCallum.

The Minister has been very secretive, actually, about this Amendment Paper 343. He’s been very secretive about who he has consulted with. We don’t know who the officials met with. We don’t know who got to write this bill for him—because some of it just has the hallmarks of that. We don’t know and he won’t tell us who he consulted with.

This is particularly concerning when there’s a whole lot of ministerial exemptions in here, and now we’ve got something else which amounts to another bit of ministerial discretion. It’s ministerial discretion. I know what the regular process is around an Order in Council and Cabinet, and this, that, and the other. Nevertheless, the Minister is getting to choose exactly when this bill comes into force and when the regulations sitting in there start happening, and that is deeply worrying. I think that the Minister needs to explain to us that it’s not just a matter of “This is what the Government decided to do.” Why? Why has this Government decided to have yet more discretion over the starting date for when this bill comes into effect?

Thank you, Mr Chair. While we’re waiting for the Minister to respond to the questions around the commencement date changing from a solid date to Order in Council, I have a different question to ask the Minister which is not so much about what’s there but what isn’t there.

Now, one of the things we see in the existing legislation is that indeed the Act comes into force the day after Royal assent. That is clause 2, subclause (1). In subclause (2), it gives the concrete date of 1 July. It has been mentioned before that the 1 July date has already passed. That’s fine. However, between the Royal assent date and the 1 July date, there must be a period that requires some form of update or implementation in order to get us to that 1 July date; otherwise, everything in the existing amendment would say the day after Royal assent. It wouldn’t give a date which, presumably, at that stage, was three to six months into the future.

The question, then, is while there is Order in Council and there is the back-up date of 1 January 2026, subclause (2) mentions all of the clauses that are covered by the Order in Council. But in terms of the clauses that weren’t covered by the Order in Council, which, presumably, will still take effect the day after Royal assent, have any of those things been made inviable or has the viability been tested as a result of the delay of the introduction of this piece of legislation?

I think that is also a different question for the Minister to respond to—that with the delay of this bill’s third reading and, ostensibly, Royal assent, that original Royal assent date in other parts of the legislation may be affected. If so, are there any other sections that have been affected as a result?

A brief response: the Order in Council option is reflective of the fine balance of this whole statute. It enables commencement of all portions of the regime to take place contemporaneously. It is not unreasonable for that power to be exercised to reduce the prospect of people being bewildered as to when the operational portions of the Act all come into force together. The Order in Council enables us to achieve that outcome.

Thank you, Mr Chairman, and I thank the Minister for that explanation. But still, I’m perplexed why it is that the original Crown Minerals Amendment Bill that came to the House did have a bifurcated commencement regime in it, in that commencement: “(1) This Act comes into force on the day after Royal assent”; “(2) However, the following sections come into force on 1 July 2025”. So that had already separated out and had two different pathways for the commencement.

I absolutely accept from the Minister that there needs to be some staggering and different parts of the bill will need to come into force at different times. But we’re still, in this committee, not understanding why this Amendment Paper has opted for the Order in Council route—to go for a secondary legislation option—when the original bill that was brought to the House had a perfectly adequate way of achieving that bifurcation of making sure that there were different pathways for different parts of the Act because it made sense for them to come in at different times. So while the Minister gave, I thought, a persuasive contribution to the House on why different parts needed to come in at different times, he didn’t explain why it is that you need that mechanism of the Order in Council in the Amendment Paper that hasn’t been required in the original amendment Act.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

The question is that the Minister’s amendments to clause 2 set out on Amendment Paper 343 be agreed to.

The amendment is agreed to; therefore, clause 2 as amended stands part.

Bill to be reported with amendment.

House resumed.

Madam Speaker, the committee has further considered the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill and reports it with amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Local Government (Water Services) Bill.