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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Thursday, 4 March 2004) . . Page.. 802 ..

Legislation Amendment Bill 2003. There being no objection, I will allow that course to be followed.

MRS DUNNE (6.22): Before I speak on the Building Bill 2003, the Construction Occupations (Licensing) Bill 2003 and the Construction Occupations Legislation Amendment Bill 2003, I have to inform the Assembly of a personal interest. Some members may know that I have been in dispute with a builder who did unapproved works on our private residence. I have received an unsatisfactory result in pursuing this matter through the building licensing process as it currently exists. Therefore I am aware of the problems of the building licensing process from not just a theoretical position but personal experience. This is not a conflict of interest because, although I have a personal interest in this, I will in fact be debating a course that would not advantage me.

The Liberal opposition will be opposing this legislation as it currently stands. We do, however, reserve the right, if amendments are satisfactorily negotiated—I understand that the legislation has in-principle support from the majority of members here—to support an amended bill. But at this stage we cannot support the legislation.

The Building Bill 2003 and accompanying bills do a number of things: they replace the Building Act and regulations of 1972 and create a new licensing system for the construction occupations of builders, building surveyors, certifiers, drainers, electricians, gas fitters, plumbers and plumbing plan certifiers.

The legislation was tabled in November 2003 after an exposure draft tabled in June that year. There was a good deal of industry input and a good number of input submissions to the exposure draft process, but I am still concerned that the process itself was quite flawed. I was told today that there has been extensive consultation on this, but that is not the case. There have been submissions. Many of the proposals put forward by proponents in their submissions were ruled out by the government. There has not been a great deal of dialogue with the community on this important piece of legislation.

The system proposed in this suite of legislation is better than the current system, but that wouldn’t be hard. The current licensing system is very cumbersome. It is very hard to get redress for work that is badly done, not done or done illegally, and that is a problem. Although this is an improvement, I think that, if we are going to go down this path, we should get it a lot better than it is now.

I will be brief because I am conscious of the time. Some of the issues that I propose to cover I will leave until the detail stage. The concerns of the opposition are many. Our principal concern at this stage is that we are dissatisfied with the impact of retrospectivity in the legislation as it currently stands. The issue of retrospectivity was a bit of a sleeper—it was not obvious; it did not come out and hit you that there were retrospectivity components. It only came to my attention in the course of last week. When I raised it with various people they said that that was their interpretation as well. I then spoke to departmental officers who were very helpful. They said that the legislation was retrospective and explained the reason why. There is an argument there in that you will get the shonky builder out there, but I am still not satisfied and the opposition is not comfortable with the extent of the retrospectivity. While it accrues a benefit to a consumer, it is a problem for the builder who may have done something that was

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