Page 3262 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 21 September 1994
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
MS SZUTY (4.34): I will speak, briefly, to these amendments which have been tabled today by the Attorney-General. I, too, would like to commend the process which, I understand, a number of landlord groups and tenant groups have been proceeding with in recent times. In fact, when I attempted to speak to this Bill in principle, which I could not do at that time, one of the major points of my address was that I commended the process. I commend the enormous work that has been done to try to bring about a consensus on this very important issue to the community.
What we have before us from the Attorney-General is a number of amendments which address a number of particular issues. I will go through them briefly, Mr Deputy Speaker. One of the issues is the terminology - the word "landlord". It has certainly been put to me by a number of people that the term "landlord" is feudalistic in tone and sexist in tone. A great effort was made to come up with a replacement name which was more acceptable than the word "landlord". On that basis, the word "owner" came up as an appropriate substitute for the word "landlord". Certainly, several of the Government's amendments do substitute the word "owner" for "landlord". That also occurs in the definition section of the Bill.
There are also a number of amendments to the "key money" definition in the Bill. While I support these amendments as proposed by the Attorney-General, I understand that my colleague Mr Moore is going to move a series of amendments which actually go further than that position as outlined by the Government at this stage. Nevertheless, I believe that it is Mr Moore's position - and it is my position at the moment - that we would support these amendments as they stand, as proposed by the Attorney-General. But we will probably go further in our arguments once Mr Moore tables his amendments. Certainly, there have been other changes also to the definition of "lease", which is another integral part of the Bill.
Amendment No. 10 talks about the proposed definition of "multiple rent review clause". This is a definition which has been added to the Bill to clearly delineate what a multiple rent review clause is. What a ratchet clause is is redefined in amendment No. 13. It is certainly the purpose of both of these amendments to make it abundantly clear which provisions of the Bill involve a multiple rent review clause and which provisions involve ratchet clauses.
Other amendments have been made on the basis of the passage of the Public Sector Management Bill, which this Assembly dealt with earlier this year. An amendment which addresses that particular issue is amendment No. 14, which defines the registrar of the tenancy tribunal. The amendment defines the registrar as meaning:
... the public servant for the time being performing the functions of the Registrar of the Tribunal by virtue of section 65.
Other amendments which have been proposed by the Attorney-General relate to consultations which have occurred with the Conflict Resolution Service, which was concerned about the mediation process as originally outlined in the Government's Bill.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .