Page 1089 - Week 03 - Thursday, 18 March 2010
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I draw from that answer that there is no set position or knowledge within the government of how clarification orders will be achieved in the future after this amendment goes through. This is concerning, given that the overarching objective in these changes is to increase certainty for builders and developers when, in fact, it seems that the perhaps unintended consequence might be somewhat different.
With regard to the amendment that Mrs Dunne has flagged, the Greens will not be supporting Mrs Dunne’s amendment because it represents, I believe, a shift in policy which is inappropriate to be achieved through a JACS bill. The proposed amendment, therefore, adds weight to the Greens’ view that these amendments are inappropriate. I acknowledge, of course, that once the process is started I guess it is open to the Liberal Party to engage in that same process. But it simply highlights the concerns that I have and why I will be moving the amendment that I will.
The government proposes to enable ACAT to award costs against frivolous and vexatious matters. Costs are defined by the government to include reasonable legal costs but explicitly exclude what are called “holding costs”. Holding costs are the costs a developer pays while waiting for a planning review to be finalised. An example is the cost of workers sitting on a site because they are prevented from working until ACAT hands down the review. As Mrs Dunne has flagged, these costs could potentially run to the millions of dollars.
The Liberals’ amendment would reverse this and expressly hand ACAT the power to award costs that include holding costs. So we are left with a situation where, with the stroke of a pen and a quick amendment made with 24 hours notice, the bill would potentially go from allowing ACAT to award legal costs in the thousands of dollars to awarding costs in the millions of dollars. The Greens firmly believe that this is anything but a minor and technical amendment. That is a policy that the Liberals may want to pursue. If they do want to pursue it, we are sure it warrants a bill in its own right and significant consultation. On that basis the Greens will not be supporting the amendments.
With regard to the remaining amendments, the remaining changes to the other eight acts are indeed fully justifiable as minor and technical but nevertheless worthy and necessary changes to the law. Two specific examples of these worthy amendments are those made to the Magistrates Court Act and the Supreme Court Act. These are good amendments and deserve brief mention here in the Assembly.
The amendments put in place a system of two-way judicial exchange between the ACT and other states and territories. Judicial exchange is an important issue for the ACT. Court delays are an ongoing problem for our courts and judicial exchange allows for interstate magistrates and judges to temporarily come to the ACT to hear and decide cases. This is one strategy open to the government to help the courts reduce case backlogs.
The Attorney-General has put in place an ongoing working group to look at how the courts can work more efficiently without appointing new full-time judicial officers. The use of judicial exchange should rank highly in those discussions and the Greens welcome the changes today to help facilitate that.
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