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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 04 Hansard (Thursday, 1 April 2004) . . Page.. 1541 ..

the regulation of architects was, first of all, that perhaps we should not do it but that, if we are going to do it, regulation needs to be minimal and it needs to be consistent across jurisdictions.

Whilst I have some reservations about the lack of consistency, the clear messages are that this is a vast improvement on the existing legislation and that what has been done in this legislation goes most of the way to creating a good regime. There are some concerns which I think that the government in this place and practitioners need to keep in mind to ensure that there are no unintended consequences. The Liberal opposition will be supporting the bill.

MS TUCKER (4.58): This bill sets up a system of registration somewhat similar to the licensing regime recently established for the construction occupations. This project had its genesis in a Productivity Commission report in 2000 which suggested, I imagine for reasons of competition and efficiency, that all architects legislation be withdrawn. Fortunately, another possibility suggested was to establish a registration process, which is the path we have followed here in the ACT and, it would seem, in all jurisdictions. One of the principles of this project has been to seek, as much as possible, to harmonise the registration schemes across all the states and territories. So while we will not end up with a national scheme exactly, we will have a fairly strong correlation between the different jurisdictions and a national database.

This bill has, of course, been developed in fairly extensive collaboration and consultation with architects themselves and the industry. It sets up a registration scheme, with the registrar answerable to a board made up of architects and non-architects, establishes complaint and disciplinary procedures and a nominee scheme to ensure that all work described as architectural is indeed vouched for by an architect. I think it is worth picking over the essential differences with the registration scheme being introduced here and the licensing scheme so recently introduced for occupations in the construction industry.

In essence the licensing scheme requires that all people carrying on work identified as construction occupations, such as building and plumbing, be licensed. With regard to building design work, there is no requirement for such a designer to be a registered architect. There are blanket restrictions in some jurisdictions where, for example, buildings of more than two floors must be designed by an architect. In this bill, however, there is no requirement for any designs to be produced by architects.

The purpose of this bill is to ensure that only work by architects can be advertised or promoted in this way. In many ways it addresses the needs of architects to have a recognised profession delivering services with assured quality, rather than the public being able to obtain building designs from either an architect or another source. Given the fact that this is a registration scheme rather than a licensing scheme, and given the fact that the ACT supports a fairly limited number of practising architects, it makes sense to appoint a registrar to work with a fairly small board.

At 5.00 pm, in accordance with standing order 34, the debate was interrupted. The motion for the adjournment of the Assembly having been put and negatived, the debate was resumed.

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