I endorse what Senator Molony has said. The purpose of the Bill, with which we are all in agreement, is to end ground rents. It was decided for technical drafting reasons that the only way to end ground rents was to end leaseholds generally. I accepted that view when I was in office but having debated this Bill and having considered the consequences of ending ground rents by abolishing leases I see that we have devised a very imperfect piece of legislative machinery. It would have been possible to end ground rents by merely making the provision in a lease reserving a rent void. Ground rents would have been caught by that, the other consequences of the lease would have been retained, and we would have avoided the legal consequences which have been exemplified here time after time in the course of this debate. I grant that there is a social argument for the desirability of retaining covenants in leases. These are covenants which are, by their very nature, inherently objectionable, which provoke emotional antagonism on the part of some lessees, but there are many covenants which are for the benefit of lessees, which ensure a high standard of maintenance of property, which consequently work towards maintaining the value of the property.
Having listened to this debate and having read the debate in the other House I have come to the conclusion that the balance of the argument was in favour of abolishing provisions in leases reserving rents while retaining the other provisions of leases. The Government, despite these arguments, have decided to go along with the method of abolishing ground rents by abolishing leases on dwellings altogether. Apart from the arguments I have already mentioned, this is defective legislation because there are too many loopholes available to lawyers under existing law, which permit the retention, in effect, of the covenants which the Government want to abolish as a matter of principle.
There is not much point in having a principle and legislating for it, if that legislation does not close loopholes which are so many and varied that the principle is totally avoided. The nature and extent of these loopholes was conceded by the Minister for Fisheries here, in his comments at columns 863 and 898 of the Official Report of 19 April to the effect that numerous devices are available to lawyers which will permit the continuation of all sorts of restrictive covenants on householders. Once that consequence can come from a Bill the purpose of which is to end covenants the Bill is patently defective. In addition, the Bill has many adverse consequences for various groups of citizens
We gave practical examples of how the Bill will operate in practice. which were not controverted by the Minister on the grounds that they were extreme, unlikely or impossible, because they were patently practical examples of things that can happen in ordinary commercial and legal situations, and we pointed out the adverse consequences that those situations would have for the citizens caught in them. It is a matter of great disappoint-to us that the Minister did not controvert the argument inherent in giving those examples, by telling us that these consequences would not occur. In effect, the Minister accepted that these consequences will happen but the Minister is quite prepared to process legislation through Parliament which by tacit agreement will have adverse consequences on citizens, and refuses to accept amendments which would avoid or diminish substantially those adverse consequences. That is bad legislation. This has been a very disappointing debate. Arguments were not controverted. If arguments were controverted, our amendments deserve to be rejected, but our arguments were not even answered. It was a most inadequate debate from that point of view.
