Page 3683 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 26 August 2008
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
you hear a major ACT government agency just saying, “No, we don’t keep any record of the complaints.” I found it absolutely staggering. I hope the minister might address that when he speaks in a moment. It certainly shook my confidence in the rationale for this legislation and it prompted me to escalate my concerns.
When I asked why the licensing provisions for body corporate managers were being introduced, I was told that this was necessary to ensure proper regulation to protect unit owners. ACTPLA officials assured me that this was a matter that had been raised with them by many constituents, but, when I asked what the requirements and costs for these licences were and how they would protect unit owners, officials did not know anything about those criteria. They did not even know what the licence requirements were that they were introducing. This is simply incongruous and shows that the government does not have any clear rationale for the changes it is introducing.
The briefing followed a disastrous attempt at community consultation, with many constituents feeling marginalised. I acknowledge—and the government does deserve a measure of credit here—that, since the concerns were raised, and in particular since the meeting that I held here in the Assembly, the minister and his advisers have taken the time to sit down with residents and go through their concerns. The result of those meetings has been a greater level of understanding amongst some residents about what the changes will do and how they will operate. If the initial process had been as thorough then, I suspect that a lot of the concerns we are seeing today may not have eventuated.
There are a number of serious problems in the bill and with the various proposals that have accompanied the bill in its previous drafts. The government has now dropped the requirement for unit corporations to hold their funds in trust accounts with interest payments skimmed off the top by the ACT government to pay for the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal. In the debate on the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal Legislation Amendment Bill, the government said that this would lead to a more efficient use of resources and avoid wasteful duplication of administrative functions. I would have hoped that under these circumstances we would see savings from this change so that no such requirement for additional funding would arise, but nevertheless the government has made it clear to us that it intends to establish some kind of user-pays system for unit owners to cover the cost of tribunal functions pertaining to unit owners. It is not settled as to whether this will be by way of a mandatory trust account requirement or some other mechanism.
I have had informal discussions with the minister. I know what he says and I think he is sensitive to the fact that there should be savings. But I am still very much ill at ease—and I know many of my constituents are—at the thought that we are going into a process where we are going to be asked to vote on legislation when these matters are left up in the air. It is not therefore without some high level of concern that people are writing in and saying, “These things ought to be resolved before we rush legislation through the Assembly.”
One of the changes in this bill that has received criticism from many unit owners is the restrictions on who can be the manager of an owners corporation. New section 55 introduced by the bill provides that the manager of an owners corporation must be
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .