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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 9 Hansard (23 August) . . Page.. 3250 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

an argument that can be made there. I am not as sure, though, that similar considerations apply in the fair trading area. As I said, I would be interested if the Attorney would take up the scrutiny of bills committee's invitation to explain why an inspector, under this piece of legislation, should be able to write out his own search warrant.

There are some things in this bill that the Labor Party is happy to support. For example, the Magistrates Court Act is amended to include a generic infringement notice scheme for offences declared by regulation to be infringement notice offences. This is, indeed, a sensible provision, and it should save resources in the parliamentary drafting office resources.

However, there are other provisions which are less clear cut and cannot be supported. The need for the amendments is not clear, despite a briefing from the department. For instance, clause 5 of the bill removes the finance industry from the scope of the Fair Trading Act. The departmental briefing pointed out that there is considerable doubt that the ACT had the power to pass the original provision in 1992 because of subsection 23 (1) (h) of the self-government act. That subsection prevents the ACT government from passing legislation relating to companies. However, I understand that the Attorney and his department are still negotiating with the Commonwealth in relation to regulations to be made under the self-government act to ameliorate the operation of that section.

In those circumstances it may be premature for this Assembly to pass the government's amendments. Perhaps the Attorney may even wish to withdraw that amendment until his negotiations with the Commonwealth have been completed. If he does not withdraw that provision, and I am not aware that he intends to, the Labor Party will oppose it on the basis that it seems to hand back to the Commonwealth powers needed by the ACT's Fair Trading Office to deal with complaints against banks and other credit providers.

The Attorney may say that these powers are vested in the ACCC and ASIC under Commonwealth legislation. They may very well be, but an ACT consumer going to those offices to complain about mistreatment will not get the same degree of attention and service from those Commonwealth offices that they would and should from our own Fair Trading Office.

The Australian Consumers Association and the CARE Credit and Debt Counselling Service object strongly to this amendment. The ACA sees the amendment as a significant watering down of ACT powers and an unwarranted limitation on the ACT's powers to act on behalf of consumers. They point out that ASIC and the ACCC are concerned only with big picture, systemic misconduct, and will not act on behalf of individual consumers in local disputes. In addition, the ACT retains responsibility for credit under the uniform consumer credit code, and adopting these amendments would virtually mean opting out of that national scheme.

I think that is perhaps the most serious aspect of the proposals that the government has introduced today-the extent to which individual consumer's rights and powers and influence in the ACT will be negatively impacted by the move to the Commonwealth of powers better placed within the ACT Fair Trading Office. It seems to us to be a serious divesting of responsibility from the ACT to the Commonwealth which must and can only

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