Page 1246 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 25 March 2009
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The bill that I present today defers for a period of just three months the introduction of the implied warranties for sale of strata title units. This deferral provides an opportunity for the government to do as it should have done when the amendments were first made. That is that it should have used the time of dormancy to mount an information campaign and also to work with unit title owners and managers to bring about reasonable changes in those implied warranty provisions.
There are serious concerns about the implications of implied warranties in the legislation and the new part 7A that would be introduced next week; those issues have not been resolved by discussions with the government, and the community organisations that represent owners and managers are deeply concerned about the implications they would have. It creates an unjust and discriminatory situation where an owner of a unit title will have to warranty the state of the building in a way that someone who owns a freestanding house would never have to do. The implications for that implied warranty mean that people will be able to withdraw from sales in a way that would not happen if one were selling a freestanding house. This is a discriminatory matter, if nothing else. It is unconscionable. It is the standout remaining issue where the Owners Corporation Network wants change from the government.
What this bill does today is give the government the leeway that it needs to talk to the community, to ensure that there are changes to the implied warranties that meet the needs of the whole community and to not put unconscionable burdens on up to 30,000 householders in the ACT.
The government, as I said, should use this time to allay the scepticism and suspicion that still abound in the community. I am sure that in the process of talking to the community the government will find that there are other measures that they need to take to tweak the system, to improve the operation of the system, to improve the community’s confidence in the system and to allay the community’s suspicion about the departments that have engineered and written this law and the operation of the system.
Now that the Greens have joined with the government in its disconnect from the community and its lack of concern about the community’s scepticism and suspicion about these new arrangements, I hope that the Greens also use the time available to acquaint themselves properly with the concerns of the community and that they too can work with the community to help make the unit title system work for the absolute benefit of as many people as possible in the community.
I just need to put on the record that proposing this delay in the commencement of these provisions is not to say that we think that there should not be changes to the unit titles legislation. In the debate last year, we all said that there need to be changes made to the unit titles legislation—but it needs to be done not behind closed doors, as was the practice of the majority Stanhope government, but in full view, with full consultation and full discussion. If this does not happen, it will be on the heads of the Greens and the government when the community comes to realise that neither of these two parties has been prepared to stand up for unit title owners, occupiers and managers.
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