Bad Law: McGinty's Obsession with Legislation

Lawmaking is no substitution for Management

The Attorney General Jim McGinty and the Carpenter Government think that most problems can be fixed by a torrent of legislation. McGinty has been responsible for about 40% of the legislation put through Parliament under the Labor Government. In 2003 and 2004 some 8000 pages of legislation were passed with McGinty being responsible for over 3200 pages. That is more legislation than in any one year of the Court Government. Add to this, the thousands of pages of regulations and rules and it's not difficult to see why the public service is not providing public services very effectively under the current Labor Government.

Carpenter and McGinty believe laws fix problems. McGinty's legislative binge clearly gets first preference when Bills are drafted. Why? Because McGinty runs the place and feels he has to be seen to be passing legislation to achieve. The result is ineffective government - look at the mess he has made of running the Health Department among other things.

Some simple tests and processes should be developed to ensure we reduce the amount of legislation and improve the quality of the legislation is passed. The New Zealand's Parliament is trying to tackle this issue. Some principles that have been suggested are that legislation should not:

• diminish the rule of law by creating uncertainty as to whether actions are lawful - “incitement to hatred” laws and the like would go. The principle is to "avoid imprecision and complexity that limits the ability of citizens to understand and comply with the law".
• be passed if the purpose could be better achieved without it - that would eliminate most recent legislation - the Crime and Corruption Commission and WACOT are two examples.
• diminish freedom of contract - most employment legislation would go.

One commentator remarked that adding more and more law was like adding more furniture to your house to make it more comfortable. Good laws he says are few in number (and pages).

A mechanism is needed to weed-out special interest political deals, delay or stop legislation that reacts too quickly to public opinion and other "busy-body" legislation.

Perhaps the government should put its legislative program forward with an outline of each Bill and what it wants to achieve. After a general debate, all MP's can rank the top 50 bills in order of importance in a secret ballot.

The top 40 bills should get priority in the Parliament in that order. New legislative proposals should run the gauntlet of a new ballot twice a year.

McGinty's Bill of Rights proposals does not need to be law but just applied to legislation, then it may useful and not be just another unproductive pig-out for the legal profession.

The Western Australian Parliament should aim to reduce its new legislation to 1000 pages a year.