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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 03 Hansard (Thursday, 11 March 2004) . . Page.. 1110 ..

Clauses 32 and 33, by leave, taken together and agreed to.

Clause 34.

MR CORBELL (5.11): I move amendment No 3 circulated in my name [see schedule 2 at page 1178]. This amendment is in response to a recommendation of the scrutiny of bills committee. Clause 34 requires the registrar to give written notice to certain people to whom the registrar believes it may be appropriate to issue a rectification order. Rectification orders require substandard construction work to be rectified. The bill allows the registrar discretion in deciding when it may be appropriate to issue the order. The amendment inserts a new note, note 1 at clause 34, which signposts that the registrar must have regard to the considerations specified in proposed clause 35A before exercising the power to issue a rectification order.

MS DUNDAS (5.12): This appears to be quite a simple amendment, but it is the first of a number of amendments that clarify the usage of the building regulator’s discretionary powers. As Mr Corbell has noted, the scrutiny of bills committee brought up this issue and the government has responded by moving a range of amendments that further codify the usage of powers under the act. A number of industry groups were concerned that the regulator appears to have an inappropriate amount of discretion.

So, whilst this amendment only inserts a note, other amendments place more substantive statutory considerations into the act. The Democrats are happy to support this process and the other government amendments that seek to address this issue. I hope that these amendments go some way to reducing the concerns of the industry. I believe that they make the bill more rigorous in its application.

MS TUCKER (5.13): This amendment and the next two clarify some of the operations of rectification orders. I note that there has been some concern regarding rectification orders. I will take this as an opportunity to put our position on some of those matters. There is an argument that applying rectification orders to work that has occurred in the past and has now become apparent is retrospective.

It is important to state that unsatisfactory work which fails to meet the appropriate standards and would warrant a rectification order would have failed to meet the standards before the passage of this bill. We are not in this instance introducing harsher penalties, or imposing penalties, where they would not or could not be imposed. The changed arrangement is that the registrar now has a clearer power to order rectification and, with these amendments, somewhat clearer guidelines on how those orders are to be imposed.

I understand that the provision that rectification orders cannot be made to construction carried out more than 10 years prior to the order being proposed was a recommendation of the industry. To now argue that rectification orders could only apply to construction work carried out prospectively is a dramatic change of position which would greatly slow the introduction of a system which promises to deliver much quicker resolution of construction problems.

A particular industry concern seems to be that a client will use a rectification process as a convenient way of slowing down payments. That is why the HIA’s preferred model

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