Legislative reform
David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (12:22): (262) My question is for the Attorney-General. Yesterday during committee stage the Attorney said something that piqued my interest. Apparently there are some mysterious people – I do not know who they are – who look at bills to repeal. I am very interested in that, because I have not seen many bills to repeal things lately. So I would be interested if the Attorney could provide an update to the house on what work is being done on repealing old, outdated or, as we saw yesterday, even sometimes potentially dangerous acts.
Jaclyn SYMES (Northern Victoria – Attorney-General, Minister for Emergency Services) (12:23): Not necessarily in my capacity as Attorney-General but as chair of the legislation committee, it would probably be more appropriate for me to answer in that capacity. All departments identify acts that have room for minor changes that are fed into a process and collated for a statute amendment bill. We have probably one a term, which is the opportunity to identify any minor errors such as missing semicolons. Effectively we call them the ‘crossing the t, dotting the i bills’ regularly. It is also the opportunity to identify whether there could be small repealing bills as well. I will soon bring to this Parliament a repeal bill in relation to legislation that I have identified will no longer be required, so I look forward to briefing you in relation to that. When it comes to acts such as you have identified – that really are not causing any errors and are no longer applicable – a tidy-up is necessary, but it is not an urgent priority of the government to identify defunct legislation that is not causing any issues.
David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (12:24): I thank the Attorney for that, and I look forward to seeing this repeal bill. In the last term of Parliament, a number of crossbenchers spoke with the then leader of the upper house Mr Jennings, and the idea was discussed – this was before everything was hijacked by the pandemic – of a repeal day, identifying a large number of these outdated acts. There seemed to be much support amongst the crossbench, and even the government I might say, to have such an omnibus bill and call it a repeal day. Would the Attorney be interested in putting forward something like this in this term of Parliament?
Jaclyn SYMES (Northern Victoria – Attorney-General, Minister for Emergency Services) (12:25): Yes, I should have seen that one coming. What I will commit to is that I will bring that topic to LegCo. Minister Jennings was the former chair of that committee, and such a proposal would come to that committee. I will put it on the agenda for a discussion with the members of that committee and report back to you.