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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 6 Hansard (23 May) . . Page.. 1773 ..

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The opportunity has also been taken to make a number of sensible reforms to the legislation such as allowing for the joining of additional parties to the proceedings and a mechanism which allows for certain specified persons and bodies, or a corporation approved by the Registrar, to avoid the necessity of paying money into the Tribunal by undertaking to pay the money if certain conditions or particular circumstances arise. Also, gaps and anomalies in the original legislation have been dealt with.

Moreover, this new legislation will give effect to the Government's commitment to review all pre-1980's legislation.

Mr Speaker, as members may be aware, initially, the name of the Small Claims Court was proposed to be changed to the Consumer and Small Claims Tribunal. However, after careful consideration, I have decided that the name of the body should not include the word "consumer" and should be referred to as the Small Claims Tribunal. This decision was made primarily because increasing the jurisdiction of the Tribunal to include disputes that arise as a result of trespass to land and dividing fences and party walls are not specifically consumer orientated matters. Additionally, the types of disputes that have come before the Small Claims Court involve consumers, traders, builders, people with property-type disputes, business people, and government and statutory authorities. I believe that there is no reason to think that changing the name of the body to the Consumer and Small Claims Tribunal would encourage consumers to initiate claims. Such a title may create the misconception that other

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