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Subordinate Legislation (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill 2009
Fact Sheet
The Bill will enable scrutiny or examination of any draft regulations by the
Subordinate Legislation Committee prior to Gazettal and therefore prior to
the regulations becoming operational. This will address the problems
experienced when a decision to disallow regulations or rules under
legislation currently in force, occurs many months after the regulations
have become operational, potentially leading to other groups or individuals
being adversely impacted by disallowance of regulations that have been
operational for some time.
The Bill will enable the examination of draft regulations by the Subordinate
Legislation Committee after the relevant Department has carried out the
usual processes for the preparation of regulations, prior to them being sent
to the Governor for approval, confirmation or consent, and the subsequent
gazettal and commencement of the regulations.
The Bill provides that if the Subordinate Legislation Committee considers,
after examining any draft regulation, that it does not comply with the
provisions of the Act, a report will be tabled in both Houses of Parliament
and provided to the responsible Minister to that effect. Regulations that are
substantially the same can be remade and referred back to the Committee
for examination.
Clause 9A of the Bill does provide for the Treasurer to override the decision
of the Subordinate Legislation Committee. If the draft regulations,
containing substantially similar provisions, have been examined twice by
the Committee over a period of three months and have been found to not
conform with the guidelines contained in the Act and if the Solicitor-General
certifies in writing that the third draft contains substantially similar
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provisions to the previous drafts, the Treasurer may, if satisfied that the
public interest requires that the subordinate legislation be made without
delay, declare by order that the regulations by made and that section 9 of
the Bill will not apply.
A disallowance motion could be put to the Parliament by any Member if this
occurs and then be decided by the Parliament. Prior to this, two reports
from the Subordinate Legislation Committee would have previously been
tabled providing details of the noncompliance of the regulations when
examined by the Committee.
The Bill does not alter the scope of the Subordinate Legislation
Committee's examination from that contained in the existing Act with the
exception of the removal of the provisions of sections 8 (1) and 9(1) of the
current Act that provide that the Treasurer by notice published in the
Gazette, may declare an instrument of a legislative character that is made
under the authority of an Act to be subordinate legislation for the purposes
of this Act. These have been removed as any notice issued by the
Treasurer that deems any other legislative instrument to be subordinate
legislation for the purposes of this Act, other than those instruments already
defined as such in section 3, should be of such significance that
examination by the Committee is warranted.
The Bill also amends section 47 of the Acts Interpretation Act. Currently
there is no penalty for late tabling of regulations. These amendments will
impose a sanction if regulations are not tabled in each House of Parliament
within the prescribed period such that the regulations will cease to have
any effect after that period. A sanction such as this currently exists in some
other jurisdictions and has resulted in consistently timely tabling of
regulations.
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The Bill contains a number of transitional and other amendments to the
Subordinate Legislation Committee Act 1969. This Act has aged over time
and is gender specific. All references to specific gender have been
removed.
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