Mr DEAN ( Windermere ) - Mr President, I do not think that there is any doubt at all from the tone of the Leader's voice that he is very serious about his position on this matter. I think the member for Rosevears and the other members too are quite serious in the position that they are opting for as well. The dilemma I am faced with is not dissimilar to the position put up by the members for Montgomery and Rosevears in that this morning we heard about a number of amendments, and as we were working through the bill again this morning there were further issues that came up that we certainly were not aware of.

Also this morning there was an inconsistency identified within the act. I think it was to do with clause 7(3) and I think the other was clause 57(1). I am at some odds as to why that is in the bill in its current form. The second reading speech that I was provided with was nothing like the speech that was given by the Leader, so that threw me off guard as well, because I had looked at that very closely. Today it was significantly different to that.

We heard this morning from a number of different people within the industry, including Mr Humphreys, Mr Hart and Mr Soundy, saying that they would support the further adjournment of this matter so that they could have some further consultation.

Mr Aird - That is okay, but it a matter of when.

Mr DEAN - I will get to that in a moment. I am also not so sure that the Director of Consumer Affairs, Mr Ormerod, was absolutely opposed to that. I just took that from body language and from some of the comments -

Mr Aird - You can't interpret people's body language!

Mr DEAN - I am just saying that I believe some of the issues that have been referred to might have been supported from that side as well.

Mr Aird - That is not true.

Mr DEAN - I am not sure why we are going down that track now with all of these further amendments coming from the Government's point of view, because we are now on to the twenty-second draft of this legislation. Another reason I would support the adjournment - and I have given it a lot of thought over lunchtime - is that I am also told with each draft that has come out there have been a number of new issues raised. So it is not as though the new drafts have just rehashed the information and the detail; as I understand it, some new sections have appeared in some of these drafts that have come out. Up to the twenty-first draft, I am told, there was some new material introduced in that document.

Mr Parkinson - It just shows an ongoing process of consultation.

Mr DEAN - It does. I understand the Government's position on this, and in this instance there is no blame that can be attached to the Government. I am not doing that, because it would seem from the information I have gained this morning that the Government has gone beyond a reasonable thing to get the proper consultation right throughout the industry. We heard from Mr Ormerod about going out and talking with businesses and people in this industry who were not covered by the main body. I understood him to say that this morning he had even done that. He had e-mailed parts of the organisation, so he had put himself out.

So I cast no aspersions on the Government for what they have done. I think they have been very good and very careful with the way that they have done this, so it appears that the breakdown, very clearly, is within the industry itself.

I have always been of the view that if there is consensus and we can have an agreed position then that is always the best position to go with. I am not so sure, in this instance, that if we have the adjournment that we could not agree on most of the issues that are currently causing some concern. There will be two or three issues, I suspect, that will not be, but I would think that we could come to some agreement with most of those issues, so I think there is something that can be gained from the adjournment.

The Leader has identified that this originated six years ago, Mr President, and I think it was 1999 when the process commenced. I do not know whether three weeks is going to be sufficient for us to do this and to get it together, but what difference is a further three weeks really going to make if we can get it done and come back within that time frame, when one looks at the fact that we have had six years?

Mr Aird - No, you're missing the point. I think all honourable members would like to have this bill concluded by the end of the year, I do not think there is much doubt about that, but what I am arguing in terms of the process of the bill is that to deal with the second reading and then adjourn, rather than stop it - whatever the changes or whatever the issues that have emerged - is not going to affect the principle of the bill, is it? You can go through these issues and I have made a list of them but they are not going to affect the principle, therefore we have the capacity now to deal with the principle of the bill, whatever the issues that are still outstanding - and that is my argument, in essence.

Mr DEAN - I do not disagree with that, but it is unwieldy at present because of the number of amendments that have been referred to and the number of amendments that were taken through this morning that will occur within this act. I had great difficulty coming to terms with it, I might say, and I am not seeing a lot of difference between this one and the retirement villages legislation which we attempted to work through in a similar way. That caused me some dilemma because of the significant number of amendments that were made throughout the process on that bill, and this bill is not dissimilar to that.

At this stage, I am of the view that I could certainly handle this matter much better if there was a short adjournment. I would hope that if this motion gets up, the industry could work through it very quickly and come back so we can have a sound position with which we can come back into this Chamber in two or three weeks' time and dispose of this matter, and I think we would dispose of it probably much quicker than the time it would now take us if we proceed with it in the way we are currently proceeding.

Mr Parkinson - If we adjourn once we get into Committee we can do that anyway.

Mr DEAN - Yes, we can, but I do not really see what is to be gained from that process. We can certainly go through the second reading contributions, but if we are going to adjourn it through that process and if this motion gets up, then there will be no need for that further adjournment during the Committee stage. What are we going to lose?

Mr Parkinson - The big difference is that if there is an indication from this House that we accept the second reading, that means we accept the principle of the bill and that is a clear indication to the industry that the Parliament accepts the principle of the bill. The minor things can be worked out once we get into Committee.

Mr DEAN - Mr President, I think I need to sit down before I can be persuaded the other way on this.

Mr DEAN ( Windermere ) - Mr President, I will simply be making some general observations because I think a great part of this debate and discussion will take place during the Committee stage.

This bill, I think the member for Montgomery mentioned also, is very much about the consumers and the protection of the consumers, and the consumers in this instance are both the purchasers and the vendors so it is the protection of both those groups of people. However, I think the observation I make and the observation that many others have made is that it seems to be weighted very much in favour of the purchaser. I suppose the purchaser will see that as a very good thing. I suggest that perhaps some of the vendors that we will have out there will not be quite so kind to the bill.

I do not think that many people, Mr President, would dispute that a review of this act was necessary. I think that they would agree that the real estate industry needed reviewing or the act in relation to it. I think particularly the buyer of real estate has required a review for a long time. Here we are with 22 drafts and a half and I think that half draft will come with all the amendments that will occur.

We can cite a number of examples where purchasers had been victims of over-exuberant agents and have not, in many cases, been given the full history that has been within the knowledge of agents when it comes to selling of properties. That is not to say that, predominantly, agents are not extremely reputable and have and will always be very professional in the way that they conduct their business, I want to make that very clear, that the evidence that one gets, the information that I have been provided with whilst I have been looking at this bill has been very much weighted in favour of the professional attitudes and ability of people in that industry, the real estate agents themselves. So that is the general observation that was made to me.

The other interesting thing was when I was talking to one of the agents and they were identifying the dilemma that they are currently faced with in this industry when they say that the vendor is in fact their client. This agent was making it very clear to me that, not only is the seller of the property their client but the buyer is also a client in another form. They were saying the dilemma was trying to be absolutely fair to the buyer and at the same time being fair to the seller and the buyer both. As they say, the buyer of real estate today may well be a vendor for them tomorrow and they would be operating for them in the opposite way tomorrow. So it causes some ethical dilemmas for that agent and they said that they had been uncomfortable in the industry for some time. They have said that if this bill goes through, it will, in their view, make their job easier. They specifically referred to the disclosure of property faults. This person did make it fairly clear to me that they had sold properties where they were aware of some difficulties with the property but they were not really entitled to disclose some of those difficulties at that time and that, for them, was a real ethical issue.

I just wanted to cite again the case that was cited this morning in the briefing we had, and I thank the Government very much for the briefings we had. They were detailed briefings and we gained a lot of information and detail that I was not previously aware of. A place was mentioned this morning, a very well known Sydney property which was sold and the people buying the property later found out that it was the scene of, I think, two or three horrific murders and that received a lot of press publicity at the time. Had they have known that this house was the scene of these horrific murders, they said that they would never have purchased it. There is a lot of debating, a lot discussion on whether or not the agents in that instance were required to reveal that to the buyers. It did go through a legal process, as I understand that, and at the end of the day I think they were able to get out of that contract, as I recall. I cannot recall the specifics.

Sitting suspended from 4 p.m. to 4.30 p.m.

Mr DEAN - Mr President, just before the suspension I had raised the issue of the home in Sydney and whether or not that would form part of a disclosure statement in this instance and I am not quite sure whether it would. When I look at the bill I do not think there is anywhere in the bill that would identify that there would be a need to disclose that.

Mr Parkinson - Disclose what?

Mr DEAN - The fact that a house was the subject of, say, an horrific crime. I do not think that there is anything currently in this bill that would identify with that having to be made known to a purchaser.

Ms Thorp - You're thinking of the Amityville Horror , are you?

Mr DEAN - A lot is said about disclosure statements, Mr President, and how they might be obtained and there has been discussion this morning and discussion with myself from agents in relation to the need to include those in advertisements relative to property sales. In my personal view, I do not see that as being a huge issue, as I understood from a briefing this morning if an agent identifies in an advertisement six to seven homes or eight to 10 homes on a page, there need only be the one reference to where those disclosure statements would be available from, so I do not think that should create any real concerns.

The problem we have with real estate is that there are many situations of where we hear about deals that have gone bad and on radio and television we hear from time to time of homes and purchases that have been made on the mainland with huge white ant problems and later on the houses have virtually fallen down round their ears. There is a lot of publicity on it but we do not get too much publicity on all the good deals that go very well. Ninety-nine per cent of the deals that are made are good deals where the purchaser is very happy and the vendor is very happy.

Mrs Rattray-Wagner - They would be 99 per cent in Tasmania.

Mr DEAN - Did I say 90 per cent? I meant 99.9 per cent. Unfortunately, you only hear about the bad deals.

I just want to refer to a stressed person who came to me recently for assistance where she had in fact had a home built in the region of $400 000-odd. She later found out, after having moved into that home, that the workmanship within the home was quite inferior and there have now been assessments done on that house which would identify that an expenditure of some $100 000 more is necessary to bring it up to a suitable standard.

The owner of that home in the situation to which I refer to said to me, 'I can get out of this quite easily. I could put the house on the market and sell it, and without having to notify a purchaser of the faults and the inferior workmanship within the home but my ethical standards would not allow me to do that'. I think this is one of the good things about this bill and that is that in those situations it will be incumbent on those people to have to identify to purchasers that those faults do exist in a home. It is a sad situation that one.

Mr Parkinson - Incidentally, under this legislation, there will be vendor statements which must contain prescribed information so the issue you raise could be regulated.

Mr DEAN - The murder? Yes. In the regulations.

Mr Parkinson - Under clause 190, vendor statements contain the prescribed information.

Mr DEAN - Okay.

Mr Parkinson - The scope is there for it to be prescribed.

Mr DEAN - For it to occur in the regulations. I accept that. One would hope that those sorts of situations would find themselves in the regulations, that they need to disclose within the regulations. I will be interested in seeing what the regulations will provide at the end of the day.

The situation this morning was raised for the need to provide disclosure statements in a timely manner, which is a fairly loose term. A lot of mention was made of the 337s within councils and the time that it takes the council to get a 337 application out. Unfortunately in those 337 applications, some people might not be aware of this but I think there are something like 7 or 8 pages of questions and material that has to be accessed and identified in the 337 application. It does incur a lot of work and with most councils today there is a process where they have to go round a number of different departments in council for that information to be fed back into those documents. I am not quite sure what will happen but I would suggest that most local government bodies would be opposed to a limitation of probably anything less than about 21 days for return in those situations. But I do know and as we were told this morning, some councils are looking at technology and computerising their systems and I can speak for the Launceston City Council which is going down that track now and they say that they will be able to get those documents out within about five days and probably less than that.

Mrs Rattray-Wagner - How many days does it take now?

Mr DEAN - It fluctuates. It depends on the situation and on whether the property has been sold off plans. There are a lot of things that you need to take into account but anywhere from 10days, I have been told, to 21 days to a month in some instances. It depends on the backlog of work as well. It depends on the property requirements.

Mrs Rattray-Wagner - I can see why there will be five days now that you are at the helm.

Mr DEAN - Thank you for your confidence.

Mr Parkinson - Those time lines can be provided for in the contract?

Mr DEAN - Yes, you are right, but I think councils accept the fact that they need to be much better at providing those documents and providing those statements. They realise that. I think they will work with the Government and with real estate agents to do better in that regard.

Dummy bidding is another area that I wanted to touch on. It does occur and it occurs quite frequently, unfortunately. I can give an example of where I was present at a multiple land sale recently where there were a number of parcels of land put up for sale. The first piece of land had a lot of bidders for it, so we were led to believe, and that property reached the value that the vendor had put on it and it was consequently sold. That was the first property. That property sale set the mood for the rest of the day for the other people that were present. Bidding was fairly robust, with the greater majority of those properties being sold. The next day or the day after, a sign appeared back on the original property that was sold and there were advertisements in the paper within a day or two of that occurring as well. So there is no doubt in my mind and on the information that I was provided with that that was a sale that occurred to try to create interest in the people that were there. In other words, it was dummy bidding and the sale did not in fact occur. There is prima facie evidence of that but of course to prove it would be much more difficult.

This sort of thing should stop such things, albeit it will not be easy to detect and I think that it would be fairly difficult to detect. Nevertheless it is there, it will be in this bill, it will form part of this bill and people who would engage in that type of activity would know if they did infringe then they could be penalised. I guess that is the important thing. With most laws people do not infringe if the law is there and that is the reason we have laws. Because they are there they do the right thing, they are not likely to extend the bounds. So I think that is a good position in this bill.

Police checks is one issue that has concerned me, Mr President, and the profession is indeed very much aware of the need to present and act as professionals. As one agent said to me, 'We are dealing with probably your most prized possession, the one that means financially very clearly the most to you, and therefore it needs to be done right'. It just concerns me somewhat that the legislation has been changed significantly in that regard in relation to the police checks and all of the public identification of people going into the business.

I heard Mr Ormerod this morning make a comment on the public notices and the fact that probably not many people read those notices, but I would suggest that people out there who are interested in these things do read those notices, and they would be of course moved to do something about it if they saw the name of a person there that they knew probably should not be in that activity or business.

Mrs Rattray-Wagner - Those and security guards I always have a look at.

Mr DEAN - You are right. It does create interest because, as I said, these people are going into your home and they have the run of your home on many occasions to do as they like. I also heard Mr Ormerod say that plumbers and carpenters and electricians and all of those people also quite often have the run of your home without your knowledge of the background of those people. That might be so, but in this instance you have people who are being trusted with your property to sell your property and to get you the best returns. To me that is not a good part of the bill. I would like to have seen the police checks remain and the public notices remain in there to give the credibility to the industry that is necessary.

We did just briefly touch this morning on the case in Launceston where there was a court case regarding a real estate agent who attempted to employ a person who had previously, as I understand it, been dismissed or asked to leave another agency. The appeal was satisfied and the court ruled that that person was not able to take that position. However Mr Ormerod said that if there had been a licence involved, the court could not have removed the licence on the evidence that was provided.

I just want to touch on the issue of complaints, and there will be more discussion on this quite obviously in the Committee stage. I can understand the position put by Mr Ormerod this morning about the reasons any person ought to be able to make a complaint, including a third party. The example given was the elderly person who was unable to make a complaint and either a son or another member of the family or a friend would probably pursue that complaint on their behalf. I can understand those situations, and I can understand the other situation where properties are advertised and the advertisements do not meet the right credentials and details, and the right of another person to complain. I can understand all of that, but my view here is that there ought to be some protection in relation to vexatious and malicious complaints that unfortunately are made from time to time.

Mr President, if we look at other legislation where there is a right to complain, there is some protection there for people where vexatious and malicious complaints are made and penalties can be incurred as a result of that. I just want to give an example here regarding local government, where a very common complaint is barking dogs. Councils were inundated with complaints in relation to barking dogs and they provided a situation of where if you were going to make a complaint, you had to make a financial contribution to cover the making of the complaint.

Mrs Rattray-Wagner - For barking dogs?

Mr DEAN - That is absolutely right. In this instance, it is $20. What that has done in actual fact, Mr President, is cause the number of complaints in relation to that type of behaviour to be cut significantly, because many of those complaints were made by neighbours who were simply disgruntled with the people next door or across the street, or wherever it might have been. There was no basis for the complaints whatsoever.

Mrs Rattray-Wagner - So you don't know whether the dogs actually stopped barking?

Mr DEAN - I do not know. So for a small financial cost of raising that complaint, those complaints were significantly cut. On the other side of that, if the complaints were proven or warranted further investigation, if there was evidence there to support the complaints, that money would be refunded to the person making the complaint.

Ms Thorp - Through you, Mr President - doesn't that cut out those with limited means from the democratic process?

Mr DEAN - If the member for Rumney had allowed me to go a little bit further, Mr President, I would have also said that there is also a clause there which says that if a person does not have the means by which they can cover the cost of raising that complaint, the councils can forgo that payment. I would suggest that in this legislation a similar situation could apply for a contribution, say, of $30 or $40. Provided there is a contribution, quantum does not really matter too much. If there is some financial payment, people would think twice about making a complaint, at the end of the day, which is frivolous, malicious, vexatious or what have you. I would suggest, in this position, if we had those complaints being made, no action would be taken against those people at all. I would think that would be the case. There is nothing in this bill that I can find anywhere which would identify that any action would be able to be taken. I simply raise that.

Mr Parkinson - The board can dismiss frivolous complaints under this bill.

Mr DEAN - Of course they can, but it is the trauma, the worry and the concerns of people against whom these complaints are made that is the issue, and it can impact on business.

Mr Parkinson - It is important, but it is better to encourage complaints and deal with a few that might be vexatious which would be dealt with quickly.

Mr DEAN - I guess it depends on what you mean by encourage complaints. I think that people should be aware out there, very clearly -

Ms Thorp - Not put barriers in people's way.

Mr DEAN - You are right, there should not be barriers put in the way of a person wanting to make a legitimate complaint; I have never said that. But what I am saying is it would make a person think twice about making a malicious or vexatious complaint, and if it is refundable, at the end of the day, people would know that they were not going to be penalised because they were making a complaint against a body or an organisation. I am not going to labour that; I simply raise that as some means of probably putting this into a better position.

Indemnity insurance was mentioned again this morning, and I think the last draft we have now removes criminal action, which had to be done, in fact, because there was no insurance company out there that would insure anybody against a criminal action that I was aware of. I spoke to a number of companies and that was the reaction I received from them.

Defalcation now appears, which now means misappropriation of money. I am not sure where insurance companies will stand now in regard to that, Mr President. We were given some information on it this morning, but I have made contact with some insurance companies on this and I am still waiting to get the detail back on it as to whether or not they will insure in those circumstances as well. So I am waiting to get that information back and if in the Committee stage this matter is adjourned then I will be in a position to talk more about it then, but I know that does cause some concern. When I spoke to the companies about that they could not give me an upfront answer; they simply indicated they would need to look at that further.

The member for Montgomery mentioned the cooling-off stage when she was speaking on this and there will obviously be some further debate on this in the Committee stage. But like that member, I am of the view that Saturday ought to be treated as a normal business day because, as we have heard this morning and as we all know, Saturday is in fact probably one of the busiest days for real estate agents and a lot of business is done on a Saturday. The way things are going with the way things have changed over time, it will not be long before we will have solicitors and banks and probably all of these other organisations working on a Saturday in the same way as they do on any other day. So I really do not see that there is a need not to include Saturday as a normal working day.

The other matter I wanted to mention, Mr President, was vendor statements. They are not valid if they are witnessed by any property agent but those vendor statements can be witnessed by anybody else. That is the way I read the bill. I do not know whether I am interpreting it properly but the background of the person does not matter, or whether they have a criminal background - I guess they have to be an adult person of 18 years of age - but it can be witnessed by anybody but not a property agent. I really do find some concern with that because property agents are able to sign contracts and many other critical documents in relation to property sales but they cannot sign that document. I do see that as a dilemma and a problem and I cannot understand why that is there, to be quite frank.

I take it the way the act is written that people who have been property agents and real estate agents could sign them but just a current agent cannot sign that document, so I see that as a matter that I will have some difficulty with and obviously I will talk about that more in the Committee stage.

Mr President, I do not wish to say any more in relation to it other than I will be supporting it of course into the second reading and I now await with interest as to what happens in the Committee stage.