Derek McDowell (Labour)

I do not agree with Senator Leyden; this is a critical point in the Bill. As it is about regulating accountants, if we do not define the term "accountant", at the very least the Bill can be evaded simply by erecting a plaque declaring a person to be an accountant without being a member of one of the prescribed bodies in the Bill. There are several ways to do this. The most difficult, as others have mentioned, is to describe the job of an accountant and define it in a way that can be inserted into the Bill. It is not necessary to go down that road. It can be described by either academic or post-academic qualifications.

The easiest and most sensible approach is to prescribe that only members of particular organisations can call themselves accountants. There are many other powers in the Bill that allow the Minister to make regulations that govern the way in which those bodies work. If the Bill stated a person must be a member of one of six organisations governed by regulation in order to be called an accountant, this would catch everybody affected by it. That is what the Minister of State should do.