Page 2685 - Week 07 - Thursday, 3 July 2008
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the housing commissioner to make several kinds of subordinate law amount to an appropriate delegation of legislative power? This committee noted that the process for registration and the monitoring guidelines are disallowable. The Assembly will have some control over these. I point that out to Dr Foskey. I will say it again because I do not want folks to miss it. The process for registration and the monitoring guidelines are disallowable.
It further notes that the Assembly will not have control over the content of the standards for community housing providers which will be notifiable rather than disallowable. It is common to have provisions in an act for some instruments under the act to be disallowable and others to be notifiable. In deciding whether an instrument should be notifiable or disallowable, consideration needs to be given to whether the subject mater is something that needs to be accessible or whether it both needs to be accessible and is something that the Assembly would have an interest in being able to amend or disallow.
In relation to the standards, it is critical that an entity be able to access the standards that it must satisfy and it is desirable that these be available to the public; so they need to be notifiable. As the standards are essentially technical rather than legal in character, it is considered appropriate for them to be notifiable rather than disallowable.
The second question—is there adequate provision concerning an obligation to provide reasons for decisions that will affect the interests of persons?—relates to whether a person has a right to reasons for a decision. The intent of the regulatory framework is to support the development of not-for-profit housing providers. Refusal of registration would come after a process of negotiation about how the organisation could satisfy the criteria. Refusal to register must be on the basis that the organisation does not satisfy the criteria.
The registration and monitoring guidelines will contain more detailed information on these processes. As noted above, the Assembly will have an opportunity to comment on these, as they will be disallowable instruments. If, following that process, an appeal to the AAT was pursued, the expense incurred would be currently $237 to lodge an appeal.
The third question is: is there adequate definition of the scope of the discretion of the housing commissioner or another territory entity in subsection 25Q? The purpose of this section is not to provide examples to set the scope of the discretion in terms of considerations to be taken into account when exercising the discretion but merely to illustrate the types of assistance that could be linked to registration under the regulatory framework.
Provision of assistance by any territory entity is bound by a range of provisions in this and other acts. For example, the Housing Assistance Act 2007, part 2, section 6 (1), includes objectives that direct resources to the provision of affordable, secure and appropriate housing that maximises value for money, promotes choice of forms of housing assistance and promotes the growth of the community housing sector. Other constraints on the provision of assistance are the Financial Management Act 1996, the
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