Page 111 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 February 2007
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that litigant’s victory amounts to an acquisition of property. Once again, I do not know the answer to that, but certainly the members of the committee, with the expert advice that we received, thought it was sufficient to put it out there as a question for the minister. Perhaps the minister, in closing, will be able to tell us whether he has received any advice in relation to that.
The committee looked at this matter in some detail. It is a particularly tricky doctrine to apply in certain circumstances as to exactly what “acquisition of property on other than just terms” means. I am not going to pretend that I know the answer to it. I would simply raise it as an issue. It is another reason that I think this bill should not necessarily be pushed through in this way. The Assembly really does need more time to consider this matter. The report was only circulated on Monday or Tuesday after we signed off on it and there has not been any great ability for the Assembly to consider it properly and to consider some of the serious issues which have been raised.
The other thing I would say, which the committee raised as well, is that there is precedent in instances such as this of a court case having identified a flaw in legislation. There are Victorian precedents whereby the legislation that then fixed that issue actually excluded the particular litigant whose litigation identified the issue. The principle is that the person should not be robbed of the fruits of their victory and there is therefore a specific exclusion in those terms. It is clear that the government would not want to do that in this case, because it appears that this legislation is designed, at least in part, to prevent—
At 6.00 pm, in accordance with standing order 34, the debate was interrupted. The adjournment of the Assembly having been put and negatived, the debate was resumed.
MR SESELJA: I think that option is open. That is an option that the committee has put to the government in its report. I would simply say that I think the reason that they would not be doing so is that this legislation is very much targeted at killing this particular court action. It is an action inconvenient to the government. I support generally the principle that in our town centres in particular, in Civic and in other areas, we should be looking to limit third party appeals where possible—not in all circumstances, but certainly looking to limit third party appeals. I raised the issue with the minister when we discussed the disallowance motion. His response, which I think was given in his tabling speech, was that there would be further amendments in the upcoming legislative reform. I still have concerns about those, but we will debate that in the coming weeks and months.
But I would say as a general principle, and the Liberal Party very strongly supports this, that we should be able to know what the law is at a particular time. In particular, we should not have retrospective legislation that does take away people’s rights. As to the issue of costs, what is going to be done in this case is an issue which may well be played out in higher courts. The issues that we have raised in relation to the PALM act and the acquisition of property are certainly relevant. I do not know how they would go, but they do go to why this bill needs to be rushed through in this way.
Mr Speaker, this bill is a retrospective piece of legislation. If it is passed in one week, two weeks or three weeks, it is still going to apply from the same date. The industry knows that and people know that, so I do not think that there is going to be any grave
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