That is precisely the risk, in other words, emergency measures becoming the norm. There is no focus on the seriousness of the measure; that isn't being highlighted. There is no transparency. The ambiguity is being taken advantage of, and the line between the exception and the rule is being blurred. What this does is create a new regime. The bill is transferring power from Parliament to the executive. That is how the legislation works. It is giving the executive the power to circumvent rules enacted by Parliament for the purpose of carrying out projects. A few years ago, Tom Fleming did some very interesting work on another problem associated with normalizing emergency measures, and that is the increased use of delegated legislation and executive government.
Ironically, even though you've all heard of legislative inflation, the reality is almost the opposite. The problem is that parliaments are increasingly withdrawing and giving the executive the power to adopt general legal norms. That is the case in almost every Commonwealth country. That is one of the risks. A regime that functions by exception is giving the executive extensive regulatory powers and the ability to circumvent ordinary legislation. That gives rise to new habits, and what is supposed to be the exception becomes the rule. The individual, the citizen, no longer knows how to distinguish between the exception and the rule.