The welcome appointment on Friday of Kawana MP, Jarod Bleijie to the cabinet post of Attorney-General, offers a real opportunity to sweep away the madness of ill-conceived PAMDA red tape that has hung like a millstone around the collective necks of the Queensland’s real estate and property development industries for the last 12 years.

Bleijie, a solicitor, was an active member of the Parliamentary Legal Affairs Committee that recommended buyer warning statements be incorporated into residential real estate contracts and the PAMDA requirement for “attention directing” pre-contract notifications, be eliminated.

The Property Agents Bill from 2010 was finally listed for debate in late October but was eventually shelved as the former government struggled with a multitude of unpopular issues as election date approached.

In a final piece of melodrama, former premier Bligh pledged in January to “create a single contract” for residential real estate to reduce consumer conveyancing charges and to lessen suffocating red tape for the industry.

This “clear the decks” announcement attempted to stem an election storm from the industry and its clients but brought nothing, except of course that the decks have themselves been swept clean of old-guard political debris.

Every agent and developer knows the current multitude of forms is as confusing to buyers as it is useless as a consumer protection measure. The forms are mostly ignored.

Transaction and disputations cost are a painfully real everyday part of the lives of most industry personnel – and many of the developers and consumers they are servicing.

At last there is an excellent prospect of real reform actually happening.