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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 11 Hansard (6 November) . . Page.. 3796 ..

MS REILLY (continuing):

One of the other advantages that will come with the Residential Tenancies Tribunal will be the gaining of some expertise in tenancy matters. Hopefully, we will get a magistrate who is particularly interested in tenancy matters. This will increase the expertise in dealing with these cases and also assist with getting consistency in application. This will be beneficial for all parties who are involved with this legislation. I think this could lead to efficiencies, Mr Humphries, and your costs may not go up to the extent that you are obviously quite gravely, but I think unnecessarily, concerned about.

I think we need to support the amendments as they are put forward here. I think it is an opportunity for the ACT to move, in line with most of the other States, to set up an independent Residential Tenancies Tribunal and ensure that tenants in the ACT have the opportunity to get fair and equitable treatment.

Amendments agreed to.

Bill, as a whole, as amended, agreed to.

Bill, as amended, agreed to.

Debate resumed from 15 May 1997, on motion by Mr Humphries:

That this Bill be agreed to in principle.

MR WOOD (6.34): Mr Speaker, I will not keep the Assembly for long, although there are some important aspects of this Bill. The Opposition will be supporting it, and I will be proposing one amendment which I believe has been agreed to. I apologise that I did not contact the people concerned earlier, but this Bill was brought forward from next week to this week because it was thought there might be a gap in proceedings as things fell through. Perhaps the main aspect of this legislation is the provision for expanded juries in Eastman-type trials so that, if people get sick, die or otherwise fall out, a long and expensive trial would not be aborted. The Government has chosen the option of having expanded juries rather than reserve jurors, and that seems to be six of one and half-a-dozen of the other. I do not think it makes much difference which way the Government goes; so we will be supporting it.

There are two important points I want to raise. In the amending Bill there are provisions - quite good and sound provisions - to protect the identity of jurors and to ensure the confidentiality of proceedings. These are sensible proposals, because they seek to put in place what has been the custom and practice in Australia, so that we will not have the situation we have had this week in the United States in respect of the nanny case and we had a little while ago with the Simpson case, where jurors come out after cases, or even during the running of the case in the Simpson instance - and give their comments, talk about things and make comments about things. I think that is a generally undesirable approach and it is one that this legislation seeks to put aside.

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