Mr WILLIAMS (Attorney-General) (11:13 AM) —As I intimated, the government does not support these amendments. The government does not believe there are persuasive arguments to support an amendment that would separate responsibility for the inquiry and reporting functions. The president, not the commission, should have the responsibility of reporting to the minister on complaints which could not be resolved through conciliation.

Centralisation of responsibility for complaint handling processes will assist in promoting consistent and coordinated practices for all complaints. The government is also concerned that the recommendation is unwieldy. If accepted, it would effectively require that, first, the president and then the members of the commission would need to familiarise themselves with the intricacies of the complaint. This is likely to lead to greater delay in the processing of complaints.

Our bill will also allow specialist commissioners to focus on their other functions in relation to education, dissemination of information and assistance to business and the community in the development of practical guidelines. As to the proposal that there should be a power to delegate to special purpose commissioners any powers in relation to complaint handling, the government strongly disagrees. One of the major objectives of this legislation has been to overcome deficiencies in the existing complaint handling processes where special purpose commissioners are involved in the complaint handling process. An important mechanism for overcoming these deficiencies has been to review the divergent complaint handling regimes in each act and, where possible, to consolidate them into one simplified act with common definitions and best practice procedural provisions.

Amendments negatived.