Page 1466 - Week 04 - Thursday, 26 March 2009
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I can only infer that she has been the last-minute recipient of some kind of assistance or information which indicated that this was a problem that she needed to fix in her bill. But even this proposed amendment is last minute and ill-thought through. Has Mrs Dunne considered how the market will deal with the last-minute change of something that the market has been preparing for over an extended period of time, when contracts have already been drawn up and prepared in anticipation of these changes taking effect? Has she had cause to pause to consider the effect of what she is doing? It would appear to me, Mr Speaker, that she has not. She blindly continues with the legislation without a care as to the consequences if it was actually supported.
Can I say that opinions can reasonably vary about the requirements of consultation and the degree to which broad public education on any particular piece of legislation is required. I am pleased that representatives of my department and my office have worked closely with Greens members and their staff on developing a mutually acceptable process and outcome in that regard. While we do not always agree, I would like to commend the Greens members and their staff for their principled and practical approach on this matter. It stands in stark contrast to the uniformed and opportunistic approach taken by Mrs Dunne. The government will not be supporting her bill.
MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (5.05): As has been stated, the Greens do support the intention of the Unit Titles Amendment Bill. We believe that it will make changes which will improve the unit titles system in a variety of ways and will improve the protection for unit title purchasers. We believe that unit titles are a very important area of government legislation. With an ageing population and urban intensification, more people are living in unit titles and they are living closer together. So it is very important that we get the rules right.
In Mrs Dunne’s speech yesterday, she said that there was a mood of confusion, anger, misunderstanding, scepticism and suspicion in all the communities, and, unfortunately, I agree. Some of this could have been avoided if the government had done a better job of community engagement on unit title amendments. Mrs Dunne was less than kind to the Greens in her speech yesterday, and I understand why. I can assure her, however, that the Greens have not tried to be duplicitous. I would rather characterise our response to the rapidly changing circumstances of the past few weeks as a display of responsible decision making, given a constantly changing information base.
It became clear to us that our amendments would actually hurt the interests of those we were trying to protect, and so we did the responsible thing and we pulled them. I look forward, as the rest of the Greens do, to working with Mrs Dunne and her colleagues and the government and the wider community in finding practical and balanced solutions to the many outstanding issues surrounding unit titles legislation and regulation. Unfortunately, we feel that Mrs Dunne’s amendment would have been counterproductive, but we welcome the forum it gives us to further discuss these issues.
The commitment that the Greens made to unit owners is to fairly represent their interests while keeping an eye on the larger picture of urban intensification and the need to balance the interests of owners, buyers and tenants. Mrs Dunne had hoped that,
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