Page 3937 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 1 December 2021
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Instead, from 9 November 2021, the legislative framework within which existing contractual rights operate is altered to require sellers to seek consent of the buyer in order to rescind under a rescission provision covered by the amendments or, if consent is not given, a Supreme Court order enabling the seller to rescind. In the event that a seller rescinds a contract in the period between the introduction of the bill and its passing, the purported rescission will not have been made in accordance with the contract unless the required notice was provided to the buyer, their consent sought and the rescission otherwise complied with new part 2A.
I would like to take this opportunity to table:
A revised explanatory statement for the bill:
This revised explanatory statement includes more information about the way that the amendments apply from the date of presentation to the Assembly.
The bill also provides flexibility to refine the operation of the provisions and addresses future concerns in this space as they arise. A regulation-making power has been included that will allow additional rescission provisions to be prescribed as being covered by the amendments that require buyer consent or a Supreme Court order to be obtained before recession can proceed.
I am pleased to bring these amendments to the Assembly in a timely manner. I would like to thank the stakeholders, including many in the property industry, for providing their feedback on the amendments in a short space of time. Thank you to the ACT Law Society, ACT Bar Association, Property Council of Australia, the Housing Industry Association, the Master Builders Association, the Owners Corporation Network of the ACT, the Planning Institute of Australia, the Real Estate Institute of the ACT, the Strata Communities Association ACT and Legal Aid ACT for their engagement with the bill. I would also like to thank those members of the community who have provided details to the Justice and Community Safety Directorate to enable them to ensure that the legislation addresses the circumstances that we find ourselves in.
As I noted previously in my public comments, this has been a relatively recent emergence of this practice in the territory, and I think that this is a timely response to new circumstances we find ourselves in.
As outlined during its introduction, the government will monitor the effects of this legislation on the property market. The bill includes a provision that will require a review of the amendments to be undertaken as soon as possible after the end of the first two years of operation. A report must be tabled in the Legislative Assembly within six months after the day that the review is started.
This bill provides important consumer protection measures. The bill delivers a transparent legislative framework for the use of sunset and developer-delay clauses in off-the-plan contracts, in doing so, better balancing the playing field for buyers of residential property off-the-plan. This framework will provide more certainty in the
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