Statutes Amendment (Relationships) Bill

This speech is in relation to the Statutes Amendment (Relationships) Bill. A number of the amendments are somewhat identical in terms of altering the definitions. As this is an omnibus bill, it relates to amendments to the De Facto Relationships Act.

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK: I will respond to that query. A number of these amendments are somewhat identical in terms of altering the definitions. As this is an omnibus bill, it relates to amendments to the De Facto Relationships Act. This omnibus bill is in alphabetical order. We might be led by the advice of the Clerk, but that is where the critical bulk of the material in the amendments lies. In the bill it is part 22, clause 69. Certainly, that is where a lot of my amendments lie. I am happy to treat clause 4 as a test clause, but it will be messy in terms of debate, questions and so forth.

Because this is an omnibus bill, there are a significant number of bills which need to be changed in the process. My understanding of parliamentary counsel was that they did start working on this between the session ending in June and when we came back in September, and they drafted amendments for all the proposed amend¬ments, whether they were in the name of the Hon. Nick Xenophon, the Hon. Andrew Evans or me, up to and including the De Facto Relationships Act, and the Family Relationships Act.

The amendments that came yesterday are entirely consequen¬tial and deal with any of the bills after the Family Relation¬ships Act. I will just explain this, and anybody who has delved into this issue, including the long-suffering members of parliamentary counsel, will understand how complicated this process has been. I had an original set which was up to and including the Family Relationships Act and which was labelled Michelle Lensink [1]. I have replaced those, so there should be three sets, [2], [3] and [4], and [1] is scrapped.