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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 14 Hansard (11 December) . . Page.. 4767 ..

Ms Horodny: It is a new circumstance.

MR DE DOMENICO: Listen. However, as an exemption is applicable only to a specified residential lease, he or she would need to seek a new exemption at the new address. Just read it carefully.

MR WHITECROSS (Leader of the Opposition) (7.12): Mr Speaker, the Opposition will not be supporting this amendment. Mr Berry was talking about compassion before. This is a most extraordinary display of lack of compassion. What we are talking about is the situation where someone who has been operating on a given set of rules, whether de facto or de jure, in this city for some time prior to this legislation coming in, being granted an existing operator's certificate and allowed to continue to operate under a slightly more relaxed set of rules, is now going to be told that effectively he cannot move house because if he moves house he is going to lose all his rights under the legislation. The truck driver had better hope that his wife is not pregnant. If he needs to move from a three-bedroom house to a four-bedroom house, he could be in trouble.

As Mr De Domenico said, and completely appropriately, at a new address you have to reapply for exemptions if any exemptions apply. Of course, you have to consult the new neighbours, and the new neighbours might have different opinions from the old neighbours and it would be a new set of circumstances. It is perfectly reasonable that rights which accrue to existing operators under this legislation go with the operator, the operator's lifestyle, the operator's employment, the operator's circumstances, et cetera. That is why the relaxed set of rules was granted to existing operators in the first place.

I do not think it is fair to arbitrarily say that existing operators are forced to live in the same residence from now until death do them part because Ms Horodny will not give them an existing operator's certificate if they move. I just think that that is a nonsense. It demonstrates the lack of compassion and the lack of acknowledgment of the inconveniences imposed on operators by these new rules which has been displayed by the Greens all the way through this debate.

Amendment negatived.

Clause, as amended, agreed to.

Clauses 11 to 16, by leave, taken together and agreed to.

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