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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 4 Hansard (1 April) . . Page.. 1120 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

be and if appropriate, a single member will be able to hear a matter. If more members are required, then so be it. This change increases flexibility.

The act will have greater efficiency than is achievable with the existing dispute resolution bodies. Again, I hark back to the fact that the Agents Board is currently composed of six or seven members. There will be greater flexibility and this should ensure that matters can be dealt with more quickly. As I have pointed out, one member will be able to hear certain matters. Also, the tribunal will be able to hear security and agents matters on the same day rather than waiting for sufficient agents or security matters to warrant a formal sitting.

Some concern was expressed by some sectors in relation to the tribunal being able to impose penalties. Apparently the existing Agents Board has the power to impose penalties, as do boards such as the Liquor Board and the Sale of Motor Vehicles Board. I think eventually other small boards will be able to be rolled into the one body.

I think the penalties also need to be realistic. I can recall an occasion on which we amended the range of penalties available to a board. I think it was in relation to the Liquor Board, and I am not quite sure whether it was during the first Assembly; it could have been in the early days of the Carnell government. It became apparent at that time that there were very few penalties available. I think there was a sort of a reprimand, then the next step was that you basically could take away someone's licence. But that can be quite a draconian step, depending on the circumstances of the offence. A tribunal, like a court, needs a range of penalties available to it. By having a greater range of penalties, I think justice is more likely to be done. A board's or tribunal's hand can be tied because there are only one or two penalties that they can impose.

This tribunal can impose penalties; it can suspend or cancel a licence; it can reprimand; and it can issue directions. I think that is a good, reasonable range of penalties-ranging from a reprimand and directions, to fining, suspending, or indeed cancelling. For example, if a big employer of the magnitude of, say, the real estate firm LJ Hooker, did something wrong-I am not suggesting they ever would do so-and came before the tribunal and the only thing you could do is suspend their licence, that might not only be a disproportionate punishment for the offence but also they would be effectively shut down and that would affect their employees and consumers in possibly a very unfair way. So having a range of penalties, as is proposed here, is eminently sensible.

I had a good chat with the officers about what the Attorney has proposed in his amendments and I am pleased to see that we had a very similar view about what would be an appropriate penalty. The current bill is very open-ended in this respect and I think that is obviously quite wrong. If you impose a penalty you have got to know what it is. The proposal which I think is going to be accepted by most people, I would assume, is that the maximum penalty be a $1,000 fine for an individual or $5,000 for a corporation. I think that is a reasonable penalty for the sorts of matters that this tribunal will be dealing with, given that if there are some very serious breaches the tribunal has the power to suspend or cancel licences. Obviously, this would be a very significant step which would involve thousands and thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of dollars of damage to a business. But I think the monetary penalty is fine.

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