Page 991 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 26 July 1989
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negotiations are not conducted at arm's length when one's goodwill is at stake and when one is seeking the renewal of a lease. Very often at that stage demands are met for refurbishment and other matters which a tenant, faced with the loss of goodwill, cannot easily resist.
The Residents Rally really does not wish to take a concluded position and assist in the drawing up of battle lines on this issue. The Rally really wants to see established a proper regulatory mechanism that does not offend the concepts of free enterprise and the rights to make contract and to conduct business negotiations free of third-party interference.
Nevertheless, Mr Speaker, we must never forget that in Canberra the head landlord is the Crown and the landlord that we know here is really the first tenant, and that landlord, of course, is making a contract with a subtenant. That is the way the law operates in this city, where we do not have freehold.
The comparisons to be made with freehold markets elsewhere in Australia are not entirely valid in terms of interference by the state when one realises that this Territory was given us under the Seat of Government Act, in custodianship, to manage carefully and prudently for the good of all citizens, and therefore the prime freehold profit motive that may direct operations in other States is not entirely relevant in the ACT.
That is not suggesting that there be any socialisation of landlord and tenancy law or that we go to the excesses of some of the 1950-type legislation that we saw in New South Wales. Mr Speaker, we have all heard and said a lot on this subject; we are all dying to get on to Dr Kinloch's exotica, and I will rest my case.
MR STEVENSON (4.15): I wish to speak briefly to the motion. I have worked with a business whose rent went up from $500 to $800 a week. That placed severe hardship on the business and I was involved, at that time, in trying to do something about it. So I understand well the problems. However, the truth was that, when the owners of the business entered into the lease, they knew exactly what the situation was at that time. Indeed, if someone enters into a 10-year lease, he or she knows, 10 years hence, the very day on which those contractual details will cease.
That is basically why I speak, because we need to be very concerned about an important rule of law here. It is to do with the ownership of property and the right of the owners to do with that property as they would choose.
Perhaps the longer period that the Government suggests might allow the building and property industry the time to look at self-regulation should it so choose to do. It would be my firm consideration in this, and perhaps other matters, that prior to legislation every attempt at self-
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