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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 2 Hansard (1 March) . . Page.. 401 ..

Bill, by leave, taken as a whole.

Debate resumed from 16 February 2000.

MR HUMPHRIES (Treasurer, Attorney-General and Minister for Justice and Community Safety) (10.40): Mr Speaker, the Government tabled yesterday its response to the report of the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety into the Agents (Amendment) Bill and members will have the Government's comments about what it sees as the shortcomings in this Bill reasonably fresh in their minds at the moment.

I repeat for the record that the Government is concerned that there have been no demonstrated cases of abuse of unemployed people in this city which would lead to the Territory imposing an expensive system of regulation on employment agents in this city. The second argument that the Government has advanced is that there has been little or no consultation with the employment agents concerned about the effect of this legislation upon them.

As recently as the last few days, employment agents have contacted my office about this legislation. I assume copies of their correspondence were sent to other members as well. If so, members will have seen many comments made by employment agents about the effect of the imposition of this legislation by government on these employment agencies. Clearly, many of the people concerned actually believed that the Government was advancing this legislation to regulate them.

I do not make excuses for the employment agents. I think that in some cases employment agents have not fully acquainted themselves with the facts about these matters and, if this legislation passes today, will find themselves in a very uncomfortable position when the accounts arrive demanding registration fees for, say, the coming financial year to which, presumably, this new arrangement will apply. But the fact is that these people were not aware of these arrangements. To the extent that they were aware of these arrangements, they have almost universally opposed them.

I know of one employment agent having written to me indicating that they would support the arrangements on the assumption that the level of fees being imposed on employment agents in the ACT were of equivalent order to those in New South Wales. Just for the record, I want to report that the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety did get wrong this issue of what the fees were in New South Wales. The committee reported the fee as being $200 in New South Wales and indicated that that would be a reasonable fee to impose in the ACT as well. The fee is not $200 in New South Wales; it is $100.

Mr Berry: And that is what the committee said.

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