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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 11 Hansard (25 September) . . Page.. 3247 ..

MR STEFANIAK: There could be the occasional situation where an applicant who might win on a technicality and might not be super deserving could get some money back because of Ms Tucker's amendment. In a court like the AAT, though, that is fairly unlikely.

It is not like successful defendants who had been almost dead drunk getting off PCAs on technical points, as occurred in the late seventies and early eighties, until the breathalyser legislation was finally amended. I can recall some of those days towards the end of that time, when my old sparring partner, the now Justice, Terence Higgins, used to run a lot of those cases and was quite successful on technical points. I think I did the last couple of unsuccessful cases run by him when the legislation was finally getting fixed up.

There were cases where successful parties sometimes did not deserve to have their fees compensated simply on a technicality. I doubt, in the AAT, whether we really see much of this, so it is probably not a terribly relevant point. But in the Chief Minister's amendment I still like the fact that it "may" order another party. There is a discretion there.

If the Chief Minister's amendment gets up, I hope that discretion will be exercised in favour of the applicant if the applicant wins and is deserving of it. I would certainly like to see that treated in a restrictive way. From what I can gather, Ms Tucker might be supporting the Chief Minister's amendment. She is; she is nodding her head. It looks like that one is going to get up.

I hope that is not going to impede a successful party getting the money if they deserve it; and I trust that, if for some reason they do not deserve it, that discretion will be used. I think that is a good thing.

To conclude, we in the opposition prefer Ms Tucker's bill, with her amendment. It is simple, and it brings us into line with the AAT. It is consistent with the practice there-and I have already stated the reasons for that. We will be opposing the government's amendment and supporting Ms Tucker's amendment. But I can count, and I know exactly what is going to happen here. At the end of the day, I think the result will be a good one for applicants who at present forgo their fee when they go to the AAT, and go for very, very good reasons.

MS TUCKER (5.03), in reply: I will just thank members for their support, having made the points already in my tabling speech.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Bill agreed to in principle.

Detail stage

Clauses 1 to 3, by leave, taken together and agreed to.

Clause 4.

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