Page 477 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 20 February 1991
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may be a short period when that money is diverted there; there may not be, subject to consultation. The Government remains committed to this form of legislation. It cannot support the mimicry of the New South Wales Labor Bill in this house.
MR STEFANIAK (11.10): It seems that no-one else in the Opposition wants to speak on this, Mr Speaker.
Mr Kaine: They are a bit half-hearted about their own Bill; quite apologetic, actually.
MR STEFANIAK: I think so, yes. In fact, I am amazed to see some of the hypocrisy coming out of the Opposition today. Its members constantly bash this Government, or attempt to bash this Government, about the question of consultation. As Mr Collaery has indicated, his working draft has gone out for the express purpose of community consultation. You might have tabled your Bill in September, but there is a working draft of the Government's document which went out for community consultation - something that you say that we do not engage in enough. Well, here we are engaging in community consultation. You do this blatantly, I think, just to achieve a political stunt by trying to get your Bill - which, as Mr Collaery has indicated, is based largely on a 1977 New South Wales Bill - passed, and to accuse us of not being concerned about this issue.
There are a lot of groups involved in landlord and tenant relationships, and we would hope that all of those groups would want input into any rental bond scheme. I am sure that they will. I know that a number of them already have contacted the Minister for Housing's office in relation to the working draft. It has been a topic on which the community has expressed a lot of concern over the years, and I think that tired, hackneyed, old phrases such as Mrs Grassby came out with which state, "The Liberal Party favours its powerful friends, the landlords, who want to screw the tenants" are just palpable rubbish. We want to get input from all the relevant sections of the community and, indeed, a lot of input has been put in in relation to this question over the years.
I was interested to hear Mrs Grassby's comments, and interested to see Mr Connolly's Bill, because the Liberal Party, itself, put up what I thought was a very good proposal in the very early days of the Follett Government. It was something, in fact, that would not have cost any money and not only was revenue neutral but would, in fact, have earnt some money for the Government and kept people happy.
I was pleased to see Mr Collaery's working draft, which takes into account the large number of concerns that have been mentioned to me over the last couple of years in relation to this question. I would wholeheartedly support the comments made by the Attorney-General in relation to
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