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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Thursday, 24 June 2004) . . Page.. 2625 ..

Proposed new clauses 8A and 8B agreed to.

Clauses 9 to 31, by leave, taken together and agreed to.

Proposed new part 10A incorporating new clauses 31A and 31B.

MR WOOD (Minister for Disability, Housing and Community Services, Minister for Urban Services, Minister for Police and Emergency Services, and Minister for Arts and Heritage) (11.51): Mr Speaker, on behalf of Mr Stanhope, I move amendment No 7 circulated in my name, which inserts a new part 10A, incorporating new clauses 31A and 31B [see schedule 1 at page 2747].

Mr Speaker, this part amends the Leases (Commercial and Retail) Act 2001 to extend the transitional period provided under section 171 of the act.

Proposed new part 10A incorporating new clauses 31A and 31B agreed to.

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

Clause 34.

MR STEFANIAK (11.52): Mr Speaker, I will be opposing clause 34. I should point out that my comments also relate to clauses 35 and 36. As I flagged earlier, I have some serious concerns about removing the role of the ombudsman in relation to action taken by a tribunal, members of a tribunal, and basically anything to do with tribunals.

I appreciate that part of the role of tribunals is judicial but I think you have to be very careful indeed when you actually take away people’s rights. There has to be a very good reason for doing that, and there also have to be instances to indicate that things have gone wrong and there is actually good reason to take those rights away. It has to be shown that there have been problems with the exercise of those rights—problems that need to be alleviated and resolved and therefore justify a change to the law. No-one has really been able to show me any practical problems or any cases or incidents where the current right the ombudsman has in relation to tribunals has caused problems. I think that is a very important point.

If someone had been able to say that there was a real problem in a couple of cases and that people, far from having their rights protected, got burnt as a result, I would say, “Fair enough. I think what you are doing is probably sensible.” I can see why the government is doing it but I cannot see any actual problems that really justify this step. There simply have not been any indicated to me.

When one compares the rights people have under the courts and, indeed, some tribunals with the rights people have in relation to the ombudsman, we can see that we are often talking about very different things. The ombudsman is a very cheap and effective way for people to seek redress by changing practices that have affected them as a result of bad administrative decisions. A court process is very different. It is all very well to say that people have appeal rights in relation to court decisions but this is a very costly process. I can see situations perhaps where some of these issues might well merge and there will still be an ongoing continuous role for the ombudsman, which will benefit

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