Bad comma: George Brandis sweats the small stuff

Among the pile of laws introduced on Wednesday in preparation for next week’s “repeal day” – the so-called “bonfire of the regulations” – was the statute law revision bill (No 1) 2014, under the name of the attorney general, Senator George Brandis.

It reveals the minister seems to have a previously hidden talent as a very particular subeditor, which some might conclude has produced less “bonfire” and more “sweating the small stuff”.

The bill’s explanatory memorandum says it is to “correct technical errors that have occurred in acts as a result of drafting and clerical mistakes and to repeal spent and obsolete provisions”. Here are 10 things included in it:

1. Part two, paragraphs 10 to 57, lists the clauses in 11 different pieces of legislation where from now on the law will “omit the word “e-mail”, and substitute “email”.

2. Part three, paragraphs 58 to 91, lists the clauses in 16 pieces of legislation where from now on the law will “omit the words “facsimile transmission” and substitute the word “fax”.

3. Part four, paragraphs 92 to 99, lists the clauses in six pieces of legislation where from now on the law will omit the word “trademark” and substitute “trade mark”.

4. Schedule five lists 10 cases in which a reference to “legislative assembly for the Northern Territory” must now be substituted with “legislative assembly of the Northern Territory”.

5. Schedule one, part four, requires the omission of the phrase “between a State or Territory” and the substitution of “between a State and a Territory”.

6. Schedule one, part 10, requires the omission of “Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Act 1998” and the substitution of the same phrase with an extra hyphen “Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Act 1998”.

7. Schedule one, part 22, corrects a grammatical error in the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 which refers to “a copy of so much of a document as in the public domain” but which will from now on refer to “as is in the public domain”.

8. Schedule one, part 27, corrects a punctuation error in the Fair Work Act 2009 to insert a comma in between the words “aircraft” and “ship”.

9. Schedule one, parts 34 and 35, correct more errors, this time in the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act to change references to a “FWC member” to “FWC Member”.

10. Schedule one, part 39, corrects a spelling error in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act so that the word “committing” has the requisite two “t”s.

No media organisation would argue the case for bad spelling or punctuation, but this really wasn’t what we were imagining when the government promised to slash red tape.