Page 2142 - Week 07 - Thursday, 16 June 1994
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MR HUMPHRIES (8.29): As I indicated in respect of the previous debate on the Financial Institutions Duty (Validation) Bill, the Opposition does not take an absolutist position on this matter. As members can see by the amendment which has been circulated in Mr Kaine's name, it is the intention of the Opposition to ensure that the thrust of the retrospectivity provided for in this Bill is successful; but we do believe that there is one limitation to be drawn on that, and that is the purpose of the amendment before the house.
At the outset I make one point about what Mr Lamont has just said. He said that the legislation does not change the rules; it merely clarifies them. With the greatest of respect, that is not the view which was taken by the New South Wales Supreme Court in Burgin's case. In that case the court said very clearly that the rules as they stood allowed Mr Burgin to successfully make a claim for a prize. The court interpreted the rules and found that that was the case. With great respect, what we are doing is changing the rules. We might not be changing the intent of the rules; but we are changing the effect of the rules, or the letter of the rules, to make it clear that these sorts of claims, even though they were upheld by the New South Wales Supreme Court, in future will not be tolerated - and nor will claims from the past, with certain exceptions. It is quite wrong to suggest that we are not changing the rules. We are changing the rules.
Mr Lamont: No, we are not.
MR HUMPHRIES: With great respect, that is not what the Supreme Court of New South Wales has found. We are acting in order to plug the breach in the dyke, as it were, which the court opened in that case. Your advice that it is not a change in the rules is quite wrong.
Madam Speaker, we take the view that the large sums of money involved in this matter are not conducive to giving open slather to people to make claims of this kind against the Territory and the lottery agencies that operate in this Territory. As I say, in that respect we are drawing the line somewhere in the sand, at a place where we do not cost the Territory very substantial sums of money. I agree with Mr Lamont that $11m, or whatever it might be, is a substantial sum of money.
I would have thought, however, that Mr Moore and Ms Follett would agree to at least the thrust of the amendment that has been put forward by the Opposition in this matter because, in the earlier debate, they argued in that case that there should not be any allowance for people who paid the money under the illegal law to get a refund because no person had made a claim based on that inaccurate law. Nobody had come forward and said, "My right is this and I want to enforce it". It is different in this case. Someone has done that - not just in New South Wales in the case of Mr Burgin, but also here in the ACT.
One individual has commenced an action in the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory to enforce what has been decided by the New South Wales Supreme Court is her right to obtain a prize under the ticket that she holds. I assume, of course, that she will succeed in the action. That, of course, remains for the court to decide. If it were the case, for argument's sake, that she did succeed at the end of the day, then she has a right.
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