Page 3345 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 20 September 2005
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You do not have to be in the Assembly for all that long—and I am only coming up to the end of my first year here—before hearing about neighbourly disputes. Indeed, I had heard plenty of them before I came here. We know that people sometimes do rather malicious things for all sorts of odd reasons. It is the contention of the opposition—and Mrs Dunne has pointed this out—that the bill as it presently stands fails to contemplate situations of that nature that could result in tree damage. The victim in this case, who will be potentially punished, is the leaseholder who may in fact have had no role in causing the particular damage but who may ultimately have plans to make change.
It is troubling that the legislation creates vicarious criminal liability for directors of companies for the actions of their employees. This is an approach that always troubles me. This bosses versus the workers mindset is well fostered in this town. It troubles me because I hear it being raised. The other day a very senior bureaucrat asked me, “Why is it in your Assembly that you have always got this approach of going after business?” Believe it or not, people in business are spooked when they see these sorts of legislative measures. It makes people in business say that it is better to operate in other jurisdictions.
The government will say, “Well, we have got three per cent unemployment. Life is going well.” I would suggest to you that our population growth is starting to stagnate and we have to start thinking outside the square if we are going to ensure that Canberra in fact can grow. Indeed, I would suggest it ought to be growing at a far greater rate, more along the lines of Queensland and Western Australia. So these sorts of harsh solutions that assume that employees are babes in the woods, that they are all innocents, that directors are the culprits and that we have got to make life treacherous for them if something goes wrong, are examples of what can be imposed by an over-the-top piece of legislation.
In summary, I do not agree with everything that Dr Foskey said but I do agree with her observation that there are a number of flaws in this legislation that ought to be considered. Mrs Dunne has expressed the view, which I share, that it is a bad bill. Of course, what the bill is all about is shifting the responsibility of urban amenity onto leaseholders. We have seen this happen in a range of portfolios. Once an agency decides to run against a small individual, to use an American expression, “it is pretty hard to beat city hall”.
I am troubled that there will be people who, through no malicious intent, may find themselves on the receiving end of some of the offences contemplated in this bill and may pay a heavy price for not being across and knowing the rather onerous provisions that we are imposing on the people of Canberra. I am also troubled by the limitation of leaseholders’ rights on their property. It does not seem to be legislation that I would have thought was philosophically in line with the Chief Minister’s view of how things ought to operate.
Yes, we need to preserve our city; yes, we need to deal with rogues or those who would be reckless in their conduct. But for heaven’s sake, let us not start imposing a regime on every single householder in Canberra and say, “You had better comply with this, you had better be able to do that, you had better know when you prune that tree”—and a lot of people are getting to that stage now as we are going into spring and heading towards summer—“what clause 13 of this bill is about, what AS4373 is.” For heaven’s sake, I would suggest that there would not be one single person in this chamber who could tell
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