Page 2471 - Week 06 - Thursday, 23 June 2011
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MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Mr Corbell, thank you—
Mr Corbell: That is the question before the chair.
MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Thank you, Mr Corbell. Mrs Dunne, you have the floor but could you confine yourself to the matter at hand?
MRS DUNNE: Self-praise is no praise at all, Mr Corbell. The reason the Canberra Liberals oppose the suspension of standing orders and moving all of these together is quite simple. Take, for example, amendment No 5 to proposed clause 10, which is an amendment to insert an additional 276(AA). This amendment goes for 2 ½ pages. If we suspend standing orders and move these together, there will be no scrutiny of the changes of definition and the changes of meaning to charge variations and changeable variations in division 9.6.3. This is why we should not be suspending standing orders.
Madam Assistant Speaker, this is a travesty. This day will go down in the history of property development and housing development in the ACT as one where the Gallagher-Hunter government drove through their amendments and drove up the price of housing for people of the ACT.
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Chief Minister, Minister for Health, Minister for Industrial Relations and Treasurer) (7.56): The government understand the opposition’s inability to deal with relatively complex issues in a bundle. We accept that and thank you for highlighting that this evening. We also accept that the Liberal Party has failed to constructively engage on this issue for the last two years. I understand that. I do not intend to speak for the Greens but I understand that there has been opportunity for discussion and collaboration around amendments to this bill and that the Liberal Party has chosen for one reason or another not to involve themselves in that.
I think that would have given the Liberal Party opportunity to understand that it is pretty standard to move together amendments that are all interrelated to each other, and they are in this instance. The 25 amendments are interrelated to each other and the operations of the lease variation charge system as proposed by the bill before the Assembly. There is nothing extraordinary about this.
This happens on many pieces of legislation in this place. What the Liberals are trying to do is have a tantrum in public because their amendments have gone down and their opposition to this bill is not going to be supported. This is good legislation, it has been drafted with months of work. Months, if not years, of work have gone into this legislation.
We have agreed to amendments being included in the interests of making the purpose of this legislation clearer. We have accepted that there are a number of strengths that come from the amendments that have been moved by the Greens. We are happy to work with Assembly partners in order to deliver the outcome that we believe is in the community’s interest.
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