STATE SOVEREIGNTY

The Hon. J.D. HILL (Kaurna—Minister for Health, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Minister for the Southern Suburbs, Minister Assisting the Premier in the Arts) (15:36): I move:

That the Legislative Review Committee—

(a) inquire into and report on an agreed process for all parties and Independent members in the South Australian parliament to follow that will enable issues of sovereignty to be considered by the parties and independent members where the parliament is considering a bill that seeks to apply the law of another state, territory or the Australian government to South Australia; and

(b) consider a process that enables the parties and Independent members to consider the issue of sovereignty separate to any other debate on a bill, thereby avoiding unnecessary debate on this issue in parliament and instead enabling the debate to focus on the purposes and content of a bill.

I move this motion under section 16(1)(a) of the Parliamentary Committees Act 1991 to refer an issue to the Legislative Review Committee. The issue that I ask to be referred to the committee is that it inquire into a process for parliament that can be used to determine any sovereignty issue as a result of a bill that seeks to apply a law of another jurisdiction to South Australia prior to any debate on the bill.

The government, obviously, does not make the decision to adopt a law of another jurisdiction lightly and there is a worthwhile policy debate whether or not we should do that in every particular case, but if we decide that we ought to do that then it would be helpful if the parliament had a process by which it could be accelerated. In the past year there have been several pieces of legislation that, for sound policy or practice reasons, have resulted in laws of other states, territories or the commonwealth applying to a bill before the parliament.

On many an occasion when a bill has sought to apply a law scheme from another jurisdiction—the most recent example I am aware of is the Controlled Substances (Therapeutic Goods and Other Matters) Amendment Bill—the issue of sovereignty is raised and an unnecessary amount of time is spent debating constitutional law issues instead of debating the purposes and content of the bill. During the debate on that piece of legislation, and one other, I said to the member for Morphett—because I understand the issues being raised by the opposition in terms of sovereignty—'How about we refer the matter to the Legislative Review Committee to see if it can come up with an appropriate way of dealing with these types of measures so that we can reach some consensus about how to do it?' So, that is what I seek to do. The I advice I have is that, given the nature of what I am asking the Legislative Review Committee to do, it has to go through both houses of parliament, so I commend this motion to the house.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. I.F. Evans.