Page 2058 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 28 May 1991
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accept. It was a tougher Bill than this one, but unfortunately the Government threw it out and we were not given the opportunity to see it implemented.
We feel that, although there may be some very good landlords in Canberra, there are also some very poor landlords who treat tenants very badly, who do not see the point of the tenant, who feel that this is an opportunity to make money out of the tenant and who do not really think about what they are doing to the very good landlords in Canberra, the ones who treat their tenants much better. I, myself, as shadow Minister for housing and urban services - - -
Mr Collaery: I thought you were going to say "as a landlord".
MRS GRASSBY: No, I am not a landlord. I, as shadow Minister for housing, have had many deputations from Canberra people who feel that they have no protection when they may pay a very large bond and be very good tenants but find that they have no right to get it back.
Of course, there are tenants who do damage to property. I am not saying that it is all one-sided. There are also tenants who leave without paying rent. Therefore, I feel that for landlords' protection also this is a very good Bill to bring into the house because they will then have somewhere to go to put their point of view and ask for their rights. So, any landlord who says that this is a bad Bill is a very foolish landlord. A good landlord has nothing to fear from this Bill because he himself will be protected and he will get his rights. A bad landlord has a lot to fear from this Bill, for this Bill will give the tenants a right to go somewhere to put their case. They will be able to point out that they have been good tenants and that they have abided by the provisions for leasing or renting the property, and they will be able to get their rights.
I myself have suffered under a very bad lease. This was a commercial lease drawn up by breweries for people who leased hotels. This lease was so terrible that it would not have mattered what you did in this hotel to improve it. At the end of your five- or 10-year lease, you may have built this hotel up to being one of the best hotels in the area; you may have painted it every year and left it in far better condition than it had ever been in before you took it over. But the breweries still had the right to go through the hotel and find every little thing that they wished to find that was different - which probably was not what you had improved - and even if you had done improvements that had made the hotel look better they could make you put it back to the way it was before. The way it was before may not have been workable and the work done may have made it a much better hotel. But you would have to do this and it would cost you many thousands of dollars, so the profit you would have made out of that hotel would be lost to you.
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