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Legislative
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| Ian Gilfillan Australian Democrats Member of the Legislative Council |
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Legislative
Council |
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| Ian Gilfillan Australian Democrats Member of the Legislative Council |
Parliament Index |
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ELECTRONIC TRANSACTIONS BILL
(edited transcript)
In Committee.
Clause 1.
The Hon. IAN GILFILLAN: In his concluding remarks to the second reading debate the Attorney said:
The government is in the process of conducting a detailed audit of the state's major transactional statutes and regulations for the purpose of determining what laws, including what documents and transactions, should be excluded from the legislation. Consideration as to whether the documents referred to by the Law Society will be excluded from the legislation will occur when the results of the audit are analysed.
I assume that you will speak further to that in committee.
The Hon. K.T. GRIFFIN: The audit is actually about three-quarters of the way through. We have not concluded the audit yet. It is intended that when the audit is completed we will then have some consultation about the documents to be excluded. The Law Society has made some representations, and I can say that, generally speaking, they are the sorts of documents that will be excluded by regulation. As to those documents, the difficulty with wills, for example, is to ensure that the person who is actually making the document is the person named in the document and that it is actually executed in the presence of two witnesses who are present at the same time. That creates difficulties of procedure as much as anything else and it is quite obvious that that sort of documentation cannot, therefore, be done by electronic means.
So, all that I can say at the moment is that this bill provides the framework that, before it is brought into operation, there will be an audit completed and then there will be an identification of the documents to be excluded. They will be promulgated into regulation and, of course, in the development of that there will be consultation, including consultation with the Law Society.
The Hon. IAN GILFILLAN: Regarding those regulations -and I accept that that may well be the vehicle to attend to the Law Society's concerns - will the Attorney give an undertaking that they will not be effective until such time as the Legislative Review Committee has assessed and reported on them?
The Hon. K.T. GRIFFIN: I have not considered that and I do not want to make a decision about it on the run. There appears to be merit in what the honourable member suggests. I presume he does not want the act to come into operation until four months after the regulations have been promulgated. The section 10 AA certificate can be given to bring the regulations into effect earlier than four months after the date upon which the regulations are promulgated. I would like to think that through in terms of the proclamation of the date upon which the legislation comes into operation. It may be that there is a mechanism by which that can be done. The difficulty is that, if the committee decides to disallow the regulations, for example, and the act has been proclaimed to come into effect on a fixed date, there is then the question whether we can undo that and, if the regulations are disallowed, quite obviously no documentation will be excluded from the operation of the legislation. I think that is an undesirable consequence.
I am sympathetic to what the honourable member is proposing-if there can be adequate time for consultation. That depends on how much consultation occurs before the regulations are made. It may be that everybody is satisfied with the cautious approach that we take, such that it might be appropriate to bring them into effect more quickly than four months after the date of promulgation. I can give this undertaking to the honourable member: I will conscientiously consider the point that he has made and indicate that I am sympathetic to it, but I cannot categorically say that that will be the outcome. But I will inform him of the government's position once we have had time to give consideration to it and look at all the ramifications of adopting that course, or some other.
The Hon. IAN GILFILLAN: I thank the Attorney for that assurance: I believe that is probably a satisfactory approach. I can understand the complications that he has outlined, but it would be of more substantial reassurance if he qualified that undertaking to inform me - and it would not exclusively be me -of the government's position and the thinking as to the timing of the implementation of the regulations, in time for us to have some form of consultation before any section 10 AA came into effect.
The Hon. K.T. GRIFFIN: I do not see any hooks in that and I will ensure that there is that consultation before the regulations come into effect.
Bill read a third time and passed.
See Ian Gilfillan's second reading speech on this Bill: 10 October 2000
