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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 9 Hansard (26 August) . . Page.. 3149 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

dramatically wrong in the cooling-off period. That is the same as the position that applies interstate.

The bill, as the attorney said, has a number of other features within it, but I will not go through them. As noted to me by the Real Estate Institute or the Law Society, the bill closes up a number of silly gaps but still lets the market forces dictate. I think that that is eminently sensible.

As I have indicated, we will have to wait and see what happens with a couple of areas of the bill. It has been suggested to me that perhaps we should use the new agents tribunal as opposed to the magistrates court for some of the things in the bill. We probably need to monitor that and see how it goes. That could be a future refinement.

In terms of the bill generally, I am very pleased with the amount of work that has been done with the industry. I think that that needs to continue for the regulations. Certainly, this bill is one of the better pieces of consultation I have seen during the life of this government in terms of the people at the coalface being quite happy with the consultation that has gone on.

There is one anomaly which the opposition will be seeking to overcome by way of an amendment. I will speak at some length in relation to this matter. I note that we will not be finishing the consideration of this bill today. Unfortunately, I have to attend a funeral in Sydney on Thursday. Because of that, one of my colleagues will be moving the amendment.

Subclause 26 (4), which deals with the bidder's name and address being established by proof of identity, has a penalty which seems to me to be somewhat out of kilter with the penalties in the rest of the bill. For example, under subclause 26 (1), an agent commits an offence if that agent enters a person's name and address in the bidders record and has not sighted proof of identity for the person. The maximum penalty is 50 units for an oversight, an error or an omission rather than a fraudulent act.

Under subclause 26 (2), an agent commits an offence, with a maximum penalty of 50 units, if the agent enters a person's name and address in the bidders record as a person for whom someone else is bidding and has not sighted a written authority from the other person to enable that person to bid. Again, for an omission, there is a maximum penalty of 50 units.

Under subclause 26 (4), an agent must not enter any details of a person in a bidders record if the agent knows, or is reckless about whether, the details are false and there is a maximum penalty of 50 units. That, to me, is a much more serious matter. It is not an omission; it is either a deliberate or a reckless act in terms of whether the details are false. Knowingly entering something that is false or recklessly doing so is a lot more serious than just an omission.

I note further on in terms of dummy bidding, for example, that the penalty there is 100 units. For example, a seller must not make a bid at a public auction or arrange for someone else to make a bid because that is going beyond the intent of the law; that is doing something that, effectively, this legislation will be banning. It is doing something which is dishonest rather than just an omission and the penalty is 100 units.

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