Page 621 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 4 July 1989
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I have one criticism of the Public Trustee function, Mr Speaker, and that is that very few people going in to make a will usually, in my experience, appoint a private executor or executrix. They tend to appoint the trustee office. One must have regard to the fact that the fee paid to the administrator of the estate at the Public Trustee Office is as follows: 4 per cent on the first $250,000 - all but struggling, dedicated politicians such as me, Mr Speaker, have more than that type of estate usually - 3.75 per cent on the next quarter of a million dollars, 2.75 per cent on the next quarter of a million dollars, and 1.75 per cent on millionaires. Mr Speaker, 4 per cent on $250,000 is $10,000. This is not a plea for the private profession at all, but I want to state that a fee of $10,000 to administer a quarter of million dollar estate - if the details given to my staff member today are correct - seems to be rather high. I ask the Chief Minister whether she could look into that matter because - as I know my colleague Mr Jensen can attest, although I do not believe he will speak to the Bill, unless he wants to - it has been the subject of complaint from time to time by persons who find themselves locked into these scales.
Finally, Mr Speaker, I have had occasion in the past to find some of the procedures of the Public Trustee Act slow and unwieldy, particularly in such decisions as renting out empty premises, at least during a period of document preparation, so that funds come into the estate. There are difficulties often in the bureaucracy of it all, and I would ask the Chief Minister to look carefully at this system to see whether funds cannot be got in on a different basis, both to get the user pays principle going at a little better pace in that area and to see that there are not too many depredations on the estates of those persons.
MR JENSEN (3.52): Mr Speaker, I would like to speak very briefly and follow up on the comments that my colleague Mr Collaery has made. I refer specifically to a situation when a relative of mine was involved in a very tragic accident in which he was very badly injured. As a result of the compensation that was provided to him, he was awarded a considerable sum of money.
However, not that long ago his mother discovered that, if the money were to be continued to be invested through the Public Trustee who had responsibility, by the time he was 40 the money would have been gone and he would have been left without any support at all. I encourage the Chief Minister to look very carefully at that particular problem in association with the management of estates by the Public Trustee. Incidentally, that was not in the ACT; it was in another State.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Bill agreed to in principle.
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