Page 3266 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 21 September 1994
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Again, it represents, right at the final knock, perhaps the process of compromise and negotiation that this package represents. In my last substantive comment in the debate I would like to thank the officers of the ACT Government Service who worked on this project for a very long period. The need for this type of legislation goes back a very long time. I think 13 years ago there was a first move for this in the old Assembly. There have been committees look at this; there was a committee - - -
Mr Moore: No, 20 years ago.
MR CONNOLLY: "Twenty years", Mr Moore says; and he is probably right. Mr Donohue probably would agree with that. It may go back even beyond that. There has been a long, long need in the community for this type of legislation. The Government has been working solidly on this for pretty much the life of this Assembly. We promised at the last election that we would deliver on this project; we have been working very hard on it; negotiations have ebbed and flowed; we have thought we had agreement; there has been retreat from those agreements; we have not been able to get agreement; we were not able to get a compromise document; so, we came to the Assembly seeking the power to make a document, but at the same time we kept those negotiations going.
I would like to thank particularly Mr Len Sorbello, the branch head of the Constitutional and Law Reform Branch of the Attorney-General's Department, who is a very hardworking officer who engages his considerable legal talents across a diverse range of areas. Officers who have supported him strongly during this period have included the Director of Consumer Affairs, Tony Charge, who reports to Mr Sorbello. He really had a lot of the carriage of the early policy development work on this. The legal refinement has been conducted by Mr Sorbello in recent months, when the pace of negotiations between the relevant landlord and tenant interests was really quite fast and furious. We were having meetings, certainly on a weekly basis, and there were lawyers representing various interests coming down from Sydney. Ms Greenland and Mr Baron have provided great support to Mr Sorbello in that project. While it is unusual in this process to name individual officers of the service, because no piece of legislation is the work of even a small named group of officers, this project has required an enormous amount of work over some years and I think it is appropriate that at the final stages I do place on record my thanks to those officers. This is a project that has been much needed in this Territory and it gives me great pride to be part of the Labor Government that has finally delivered on a much-needed reform.
MR MOORE (4.49): Madam Speaker, before going to the substantive part of my speech I would also like to thank, through Mr Connolly, those officers who spent a great deal of time briefing Ms Szuty and me and were there to answer questions for me and for my staff members in a short amount of time and, particularly, Parliamentary Counsel officers who I know this last week have done an extraordinary amount of work in getting amendments ready for me, for Ms Szuty and for others.
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