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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 6 Hansard (15 June) . . Page.. 1968 ..

MR SMYTH (Minister for Urban Services, Minister for Business, Tourism and the Arts and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (12.15 am), in reply: Mr Speaker, I thank the Assembly for their support for this bill. Although many of the firms involved have joined the voluntary National Packaging Covenant, it is important that we have mechanisms behind the covenant to ensure that those who do not do the right thing voluntarily can be pushed to make them comply. It is an important bill. It becomes very important in our drive for the No Waste by 2010 strategy, and it will help us achieve the next steps towards that goal. I thank the Assembly for their support and commend the bill to the house.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Bill agreed to in principle.

Leave granted to dispense with the detail stage.

Bill agreed to.

Postponement of orders of the day

Motion (by Mr Moore ) agreed to:

First Home Owner Grant Amendment Bill 2001

Debate resumed from 3 May 2001, on motion by Mr Humphries:

MR QUINLAN (12.16 am): We will happily support this bill. I will just make a couple of comments. I am a little concerned that this extra $7,000 will really only follow on from previous disturbances in the housing market. There was the GST pull-forward, followed by the necessary $7,000 pull-forward. Then Mr Howard found that the trough was getting nearer anyway, so he threw another $7,000 on top of it in order to keep economic indicators okay until December-and it at all fades out in December.

Mr Moore: Is that the reason?

MR QUINLAN: Yes. Just as an aside, I can recall reading the tabled dissenting report by Mrs Burke and Mr Hird in relation to the estimates committee on the pull-forward of housing demand by these devices. They wrote, in a quite surprisingly erudite fashion, that I had a fundamental misunderstanding of the whole picture. I suggest that they go talk to the HIA. I have had discussions with the chief economist of the national office of the HIA. They are certainly concerned about, and have statistics to back up, the fact that this process is a pull-forward. Let's hope that the trough is a low, slow trough rather than a bit of a dip. We support the bill.

Take out some hedging on it. Get a housing derivative or something.

MR HUMPHRIES (Chief Minister, Minister for Community Affairs and Treasurer) (12.18 am), in reply: I thank Mr Quinlan for his support of this. It is quite important that a grant be available to first home owners in the ACT, and I am very glad that the passage of legislation has been

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