Page 3232 - Week 11 - Thursday, 12 September 1991
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HOUSING ASSISTANCE (AMENDMENT) BILL 1991
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (11.17): Mr Speaker, I present the Housing Assistance (Amendment) Bill 1991. I move:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
The Housing Assistance Act 1987, the principal Act, establishes the office of Commissioner for Housing and provides the framework for the provision of housing assistance in the Territory. This Bill seeks to amend the principal Act to bring within the scope of the Subordinate Laws Act 1989 determinations of fees made by the Commissioner for Housing under housing assistance programs operating under the principal Act.
This amendment will give effect to an undertaking made earlier by the former Minister to this Assembly's Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills and Subordinate Legislation, and is a revision of a proposal put forward by the previous Government. The amendment is highly desirable because it brings the arrangements for fee determinations made under housing assistance programs into line with the arrangements for similar determinations made under ACT legislation generally. Those arrangements require fee determinations to be notified in the Gazette and tabled in this Assembly, where they are subject to scrutiny and possible disallowance.
Although the commissioner is empowered under certain housing assistance programs to determine fees, such determinations are not expressed in the principal Act to be disallowable instruments. This means that they are not caught by the Subordinate Laws Act 1989 and are therefore not subject to the scrutiny of this Assembly.
This Bill seeks to rectify this anomalous situation by extending the definition of "relevant instrument" in section 12 of the principal Act to include determinations of fees made under housing assistance programs, and variations and revocations of such determinations. This has the effect of bringing such instruments under the notification and tabling requirements of the Subordinate Laws Act 1989. I present the explanatory memorandum for this Bill.
Debate (on motion by Mr Jensen) adjourned.
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