Page 1259 - Week 04 - Thursday, 5 May 2022
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market. According to lobby group Better Renting, the locally based national tenants advocacy group, many of their members have been moved out of their long-term rentals by landlords and have subsequently found their old homes now advertised on Airbnb.
The ability to move their properties, which once provided more secure housing through tenancy agreements, into the short-term, insecure, platform-based market is highly problematic and should alarm this Assembly. This is an industry which is not required to meet the obligations of residential tenancies to provide basic levels of security and affordability to the residents of these homes.
These providers are also not obligated to meet the same regulations as other accommodation providers, placing uneven obligations upon different accommodation providers. The impact of platform-based, short-term accommodation providers on our hotel industry is something that the Australian Hotels Association have been quick to point out in their submissions to similar inquiries to the one I am proposing that have occurred around the country in recent years.
Should the committee agree to my request today, as the ACT Greens tourism spokesperson I warmly welcome the hotel and tourism industry participating in such an inquiry as well. After conducting inquiries, several other states and local jurisdictions around the country have moved to regulate platform-based, short-term accommodation providers. In March the Hobart city council moved to limit the number of whole home short-stay rentals in Hobart to try to bring some balance to the provision of diverse short-term accommodation options and the need to provide secure and affordable housing to their community. The Gold Coast, Noosa and Brisbane city councils have all moved to regulate short-term accommodation providers in different but complementary ways.
Other jurisdictions have focused on the impact of Airbnbs on surrounding residents in terms of noise pollution and other un-neighbourly disturbances. While this is not the focus of this motion directly, I was this week contacted by a constituent concerned about the impact of an Airbnb that had been set up in her suburban street. I encourage the public transport and city services committee and the planning committee to also consider these concerns, should they choose to investigate this matter.
While some national governments are doing what we can to impact housing affordability in our communities, we can only really tinker around the edges, so long as federal tax incentives encourage people who cannot afford to become landlords to become landlords. Perverse tax incentives such as negative gearing rob from working-class people and give back to the landlord class, while working-class people continue to struggle under the weight of ever-increasing rents and other cost of living pressures.
There are some that have suggested that this burden on landlords is too great and that further regulation designed to reduce the cost of living and increase renter comfort will reduce the number of properties on the rental market. To those concerned, I would say: is that a bad thing? If a landlord decides that being a landlord is no longer a profitable investment, they will choose to put that property on the market for
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