In a serious underestimation of the creative madness of Fair Trading Minister Peter Lawlor, this blog predicted in May that in the horror show that is PAMDA, the monster would live on even though some of its heads had been cut off.

We apologise to the Minister. Our prediction was wrong.

Rather, a plot twist has been revealed after we all thought the flick had ended and after new PAMDA with most of its monster heads cut off, had been tamed and was starting to be welcomed into our homes and businesses.

But NO, in the twist that has only been previewed by those who stayed back past the credits: the monster is slaughtered but the CUT-OFF HEADS COME BACK TO LIFE!

YES. Can you believe it? As an end-of-credits farce to follow the last 10 years of awful PAMDA horror, new PAMDA (passed by parliament only on 18 August) already has its own sequel! PAMDA will now be repealed and replaced by yet another new piece of real estate legislation: The Property Agents Act – a real estate agent devouring zombie-head reincarnated from the PAMDA monster itself!

If it were not so horrible, this really would be ROFLOLSHIAH funny.

To those who didn’t stay for the end, and were just hoping for their red-tape and money-waste night terrors to gradually subside: No chance.

Apparently the $1.5 billion cost to the Queensland economy from the absurd compliance provisions wasn’t enough agony! Apparently the further millions spent on head-scratching and re-tooling for new PAMDA since May by real-estate and legal wasn’t enough horror. Apparently the even further millions needed to fund bureaucrats to bring down this new law doesn’t even rate.

The monster wrangler/minister says the NEW new law will be the same as new PAMDA. But it’s not – there are differences, the warning statement won’t be a Form 30C, all forms will change numbering, all section numbers will change and most precedents, forms etc will need to be replaced. The Property Agent’s Bill is intended to house all regulatory provisions for the real estate industry and also the sustainability notification requirements – but there would have been a lot of time, money and nightmares saved if it had all been done at the same time.

Once again agents and lawyers will have to trawl a new law to search for consistency and lack of it. More papers, articles, advice, seminars.

Of course industry has nothing better to do – to work on implementation for the last three months only to be told after THE END that we have to do it all AGAIN!

We hope that the new procedures and the transitional arrangements are the same. But we sure can’t take the Minister’s word for it. And we know from experience what mad movie directors do if we start to feel comfortable in our seats.

In August we asked: “Are we all supposed to now just forget about it – and be grateful that government has finally recanted after ten years of stupidity?” But even the assumptions to that rhetorical question have proved wrong.

What else does this Minister have to do before he gets the chop himself?