Page 610 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 21 March 1990
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supporting their calls for legislation to control the relationship between tenants and their landlords. It was the Rally push that got the select committee up and running.
Indeed, it was Mr Jensen's motion that formed the committee.
Mr Jensen was seen by the tenants as their champion in getting the committee set up to push forcefully for specific legislation. As far as the tenants are concerned, he is no longer their champion.
When the article goes on to the recommendations, which I have already read to the Assembly, it says:
Instead of specific legislation, the committee has recommended the tenants and landlords get together to work out their own code of practice, to eventually be supported by general legislation in the form of a Fair Trading Act which would concentrate on consumer protection.
The recommendation does nothing to rectify what the Residents Rally identifies as an imbalance between negotiating powers of the landlords and the tenants.
The fact that Mr Jensen has not dissented from the recommendations of the committee is being viewed by his own party as a backdown.
Quite clearly, this is yet another piece of evidence of the way in which members of the conservative coalition have to bend over backwards in order to accommodate the other conservative members of their grouping. We have seen it time and again so far, and, of course, the net result is that it has a paralysing effect. All that bending over - a most unusual and unreasonable posture - has a paralysing effect on their capacity to do things. That is demonstrated - and it will be discussed this afternoon during the matter of public importance - by the total lack of activity that we have seen coming from this Government in the last 100 days since it was sworn in.
In the same context, I could take members of the Assembly to extracts from the Hansard, which demonstrate the superficial commitment to this matter in the legislation by the now Deputy Chief Minister, Mr Bernard Collaery. Mr Speaker, you might recall the attacks on Mr Hedley that Mr Collaery initiated in this Assembly in the context of this very matter. It was in this context that Mr Hedley was viciously and quite improperly attacked by Mr Collaery. I refer you to the Hansard of July 1989 when this matter came up in the Assembly. It was in that context that Mr Collaery - - -
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