Page 2853 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 19 September 2006
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removal of some redundancies and archaic constructions, it does not and does not intend to change much in the way of intent or effect.
My office sought advice from people who might be affected by this project and we gave the legislation itself some examination. We are satisfied that the bill does exactly what it claims to do. This is not the occasion to discuss any possible changes to the operation of our property law or any challenges to or expansion of the principles that underpin them. We will save that discussion up to the next stage of the project. I will be supporting the bill.
MR HARGREAVES (Brindabella—Minister for the Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Housing and Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (11.30): Mr Speaker, the speech that I am about to make will have the effect of closing the debate. I would like to foreshadow that I will be seeking leave to move two government amendments during the detail stage of the Civil Law (Property) Bill 2005. I will be tabling a supplementary explanatory statement in respect of the amendments.
The Civil Law (Property) Bill is the culmination of a commitment by this government to consolidate and simplify the law of property in the ACT. The current law relating to property in the ACT cannot be found in a complete conveyancing act or property act. In the ACT, the law relating to property and conveyancing is found in various places—in the common law; in imperial acts, most of which are reinstated in the Imperial Acts (Substituted Provisions) Act 1984; in New South Wales acts received by the territory when it was established in 1911, some of which were restated by the New South Wales Application Act 1984, and in provisions derived from New South Wales laws adopted in the ACT, of which the Conveyancing Act 1919 is the most significant; and, of course, in various ACT acts.
The numeration in the bill is such that in the future the two remaining huge bodies of law outside the bill at present—the Land Titles Act 1925 and the Civil Law (Sale of Residential Property) Act 2003—can be brought into the act. This is not attempted at this stage because these two bodies of law deal with fairly difficult subject matters and the priority has been to establish the framework that we have before us today.
The bill is a restatement of the present or existing statute law rather than a revision of it. The law, once the bill is passed, will for all practical purposes be almost identical to the law as it is today. However, the bill does represent a significant advance on the current position in three important respects. Firstly, the bill brings together a substantial part of the ACT’s statute law about property and it presents that law in a much more accessible way. Secondly, the bill largely completes the process of removing redundant and confusing provisions in this area of the law that no longer serve any useful purpose. Finally, the bill, although not itself changing the law, will provide a platform through which changes can be made in the future. Until now, the ACT has not had legislation that could fulfil that function.
The bill replaces the five remaining acts relating to conveyancing with a single new act which, as far as possible, will be expressed in simple, up-to-date language and be in a form which makes it easy to understand the elements of its provisions and the relationship between those elements, and have a logical structure that enables readers to easily find the provisions relevant to them. The bill does not make any significant change
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