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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 4 Hansard (7 May) . . Page.. 1099 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

Secondly, the eviction processes under this Bill of Ms Reilly's are different to those currently used. The current procedures in Housing are well established and involve appeal processes through the internal Housing Review Committee. Training of staff in revised processes would be needed and would be disruptive to client services, given the short period for implementation. Procedures would also need to be written to cover all the prescriptive elements of the legislation. There is an additional further cost there, as well as the considerable costs because of the first point in relation to the receipts. I will come back to what might be done in terms of getting around that, but that second process in relation to evictions under the Landlord and Tenant Act is quite significant.

Ms Reilly probably appreciates - and I think she made some mention of it in her tabling speech - that, in fact, in most instances, tenants are actually told in the eviction notice why they are going, which is a requirement under section 63 of this legislation. I understand that is one of her main concerns. She is concerned that there is no legal provision for that. But I think she concedes that in all instances, in terms of ACT Housing - and I cannot really think of any where this is not the case - before eviction proceedings are finally taken, immense steps are taken to ensure that the situation is rectified through consultation or through arrangements with Housing. The two main reasons for evictions, Mr Speaker, are non-payment of rent and significant rent arrears. Housing has a number of processes in place there, ranging from four categories of reminder letters to coming to arrangements with the tenant in relation to repaying the rent at a rate the tenant can actually afford.

Since I have been Minister I have seen many instances of Housing having anything up to 15 agreements with the tenant which have been broken and a new agreement entered into, prior to the matter actually proceeding to court. Certainly, in most instances, tenants are given a number of opportunities to enter into agreements and even a lot of leeway when they break agreements, before the matter actually ends up in court. It takes at least six to about 12 months in most instances for a matter to actually end up in court, because of the steps taken in the meantime. If a tenant is disgruntled by a Housing Trust decision, even upon the issuing of a notice to quit, they can apply to the Housing Review Committee, and this in fact occurs. Ms Reilly has a problem with evictions, but I can inform her that tenants are certainly, in practice, told exactly what it is for.

The same applies, Mr Speaker, on the rare occasions - because it is often harder to prove - when some tenants, unfortunately, are very disruptive and cause great problems to their neighbours; be they other Housing Trust tenants or people in private accommodation. In those instances, again all efforts are made initially just to tell the tenant of the problem, to see whether they can modify their behaviour, and then, if need be, conflict resolution can be called in. Finally, before you end up having eviction proceedings, a lot of steps are taken to advise the tenant, to try to resolve the problem. In terms of tenants being advised why they are being evicted, in those two main instances - and I am not aware of any other instances where people are evicted from ACT Housing Trust properties - there are ample steps and protections currently in place for tenants, far greater than in the private sector. I cannot see how tenants will benefit in any way from this Bill.

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