Having again inquired into a problem presented to us in subsection (2) I am not at all happy that the Minister is correct in his attitude and I would ask him to review his attitude to the section because there now appears to be written in for the first time since the abolition of rates a new distinction between certain categories: (1) people who did not pay rates and do not now pay rates and (2) people who in the Minister's view still have a superior or prior right to be involved in a hearing for malicious damages primarily or almost exclusively because at some time in the past they paid rates. They were participants in a system which was abolished because it was fundamentally unjust and inequitable. But that right is not merely to apply to people who had their own homes and paid rates. It is also now to apply to new home owners. It will, for instance, apply to new home owners who purchase their houses in 1983 or 1985. We encourage home ownership and the mere fact that the person has the ability or the financial capacity to purchase his own home gives him a right stronger and superior to the right of anybody else who is not paying rates and does not own his own home.
In truth, neither the new home owner nor the tenant of local authority housing or private housing accommodation, of which there are 300,000 to 400,000 now pay rates; but the fact of home ownership, for some reason which seems routed in a historical idea that those who own property should have a stronger right — it is purely historical in that context — will still give people a stronger and greater involvement in such hearings. That is unacceptable and does not gel with what I would regard as a proper system of social justice particularly in the area of malicious injury in which public moneys are involved. Persons living in private rented accommodation, whether they be students or workers, and the thousands of tenants in local authority accommodation should have an equal right to a say in how malicious injury compensation is handled. The fact is they do not have the same say. That is my point. They do not have the same right and neither do they have an equal right.
It is wrong to continue this distinction. We could argue that people who used to pay rates should not have the right taken from them. What we are concerned with here is that people who in ten years' time take out a mortgage or have the finance to buy their own homes — that is very difficult at the moment — have a different right. Such distinctions tend to divide society. I do not pretend there will be a major schism over the subsection but, as it stands, it is inequitable and should be removed. Nothing the Minister has said so far convinces me to the contrary. The word "ratepayer" should be replaced by some other word relating to a person's residence in a local authority area. That would be a step towards realising, regardless of property status, that we all have a common interest in the welfare of the community, a common interest in ensuring that vandalism, malicious injury or damage are all contained and that the increasing growth of such dire statistics is stayed. This does not do anything of that nature but simply says the same order prevaileth. Even now, when we have decided to get rid of the basis of such distinction, we will nevertheless continue a notional idea, and not just continue it but re-introduce it whenever anybody purchases a home. That is wrong.
