Page 694 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 31 March 2021
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The first stage of the reforms has now occurred, with changes to legislation to address some of these problems. Stage two will consider further reforms to unit title legislation in the future.
Stage one of the unit title reforms commenced on 1 November 2020 and the initial package of reforms included allowing owners corporations and executive committees to meet and vote electronically; requiring owners corporations to prepare a maintenance schedule of common property and buildings; introducing new default rules for all owners corporations; permitting separate budgets and different levies for parts of the building—for example, the commercial units may have different levies to the residential units; establishing building management statements which set out how more complex multi-lease buildings are to be managed; providing disclosure statements to buyers of off-the-plan units which give a greater level of information on the unit and additional rights to rescind the contract if the unit is not as described; and making it easier to keep pets in units and install energy and water-saving devices.
The minor amendments to unit title legislation in the bill before us today support these reforms and ensure that the reforms will operate as intended. Most of the unit title reforms in this bill were raised by the unit title reform consultation group. This group includes industry and community representatives of the strata and property industries such as the Owners Corporation Network, Strata Community Australia, ACT Law Society, Property Council of Australia, Master Builders Association, Housing Industry Association, Real Estate Institute of the ACT and the Legal Aid ACT group as well. This consultative group has been instrumental in the development of the first stage of the unit title reforms and will continue working on the next phase of the project.
In summary, the Planning and Unit Titles Legislation Amendment Bill 2020 makes a number of minor and necessary changes to support the unit titles reform project. It also makes a number of minor and necessary changes to the new processes for granting community concessional leases, which my friends have talked about already. I commend the bill to the Assembly.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Bill agreed to in principle.
Leave granted to dispense with the detail stage.
Bill agreed to.
Sitting suspended from 11.56 am to 2.00 pm.
Ministerial arrangements
MR BARR: As colleagues may have noticed, the Attorney-General is not in question time today. He is attending a National Cabinet committee of attorneys-general—as it is now called; I was going to say “COAG”. I will endeavour to assist members with
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