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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 4 Hansard (29 March) . . Page.. 1147 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

Mr Speaker, the minister has made much about the effect on four seasonal vehicles. Indeed, in the discussions yesterday between me, the minister and Mr Rugendyke we did talk about the possibility of changing regulations to create some sort of fairness for seasonal vehicles like historic vehicles. We talked about the possibility of changing the regulations to widen the definition of that. I do not have a problem with that in the case of people like my colleague Mr Quinlan who has a vehicle that is used for charity. Fine. Let's change the definition to include his vehicle. Everyone is a winner. But, Mr Speaker, this does not address the people who have financial difficulties.

Mr Rugendyke may very well not remember the words of the minister, but I do, very clearly. By way of a memory jog, I also repeat what the minister said yesterday too when I said that this legislation is creating a disadvantage. The minister said yes, this legislation is going to create a new disadvantage. Most importantly, the minister himself admitted it will create a new disadvantage.

Now, we can correct it for the seasonal vehicles-certainly, I do not have any trouble with that-but we cannot for people who cannot afford it. The minister said, "Don't worry about the people who have financial hardship because they have the option of doing it for three, six or 12 months." The status quo exists for that. That is not the issue. The issue is when a person cannot afford to renew their registration for over 12 weeks. We are talking about three months. Remember, it is only 12 weeks, six pays.

It might be all well and good for someone on $120,000 a year to be able to fix it up within a pay or two, but I suggest to you that for the fellow who spoke to me on the telephone the other day, who is on less than $20,000 a year, a 12-week period is a problem, and he does just that. He registers his car for six months of the year and then he leaves it sitting in the garage and catches the bus. Then he comes back later on and re-registers the car again. With his family commitments, he cannot afford this.

Continuous registration, which is what we are talking about here, is the pivot point. When I advised the minister today that we were going to move for disallowance of that particular part of it, 68A, he said, "Oh, you finally twigged to that." We had not finally twigged to that, Mr Speaker. We had had some concerns about it for some time. But the point that Ms Tucker's office made to us, and Mr Rugendyke's office also made, quite rightly, is that the two are so inextricably linked that we need to do them together, and I support that view.

I was of the view that we still have another three sitting days to go before this allowance period is completed, and that we could take an opportunity to look at the rest then. My main concern was to address the financial hardship part. I believed that the thing had to be dealt with before 31 March because I wanted to prevent any financial hardship for people who would be caught up in the ensuing period between today and our first sitting period in May, which is some five weeks away.

Mr Speaker, the continuous registration is inextricably linked to the phrase "access to the network", and I have to reiterate what I said before. The minister's comment to this gentleman was that the registration fee is essentially an access fee to the road network rather than a payment related to actual use. If that is so then the big semitrailers would be paying the same access fee as a motorbike, and then you may load things up and down on that according to the damage that they do. But that is not the way it works.

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