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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 4 Hansard (7 May) . . Page.. 1100 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

Ms Reilly's other main point effectively is that tenants in Housing Trust accommodation should be placed in the same position as tenants in private rental accommodation. We accept that, and that is why in the new residential tenancies legislation Housing Trust tenants and private tenants will be subject to the same law. The new legislation overcomes Ms Reilly's main substantive point that there should be no difference between tenants.

The third problem for ACT Housing in all of this, Mr Speaker, is the notification of market rent increases, which is currently done for all ACT Housing Trust tenants on the one day each year so that all tenants are made aware of any revised market rent at that same time. That would be substantially changed by this legislation. This legislation would change the current situation by requiring ACT Housing to notify tenants on the anniversary of their tenancy. This would involve a process of continual notification to tenants throughout the year and would have tenants paying different rents because of the different dates of notification. Some tenants could still be notified in accordance with the current system, but a large number would have to be notified in a different way. This would cause significant cost and dislocation to Housing. I am advised today that they simply do not have the processes which could handle that, were that to be passed.

I have mentioned these things to Ms Reilly and if this matter gets up there are a couple of initial steps the Government could take to rectify the significant cost problems, but there are other problems we simply could not overcome; especially, I think, the problems in relation to the eviction process. The proposed Residential Tenancies Bill will, by being applied to public housing, include provisions which will ensure equity between public and private residential tenancies and proper cost-benefit assessments, with the object of ensuring that public and private residential tenancies are regulated in the same manner. I have been told that will be brought in during these sittings. The Bill, I am advised, has had its coordinating comments made. They are due in by today. That Bill is, indeed, imminent.

Mr Speaker, one further point which could be a problem in relation to Ms Reilly's Bill is that paragraphs 71(1)(a) and (b) of the original Act provide that a court shall take into consideration, in terms of any eviction proceedings, any hardship that could be caused to the lessee or another person by making the order or, indeed, by refusing to make the order. That, in itself, could cause problems because 90 per cent of our tenants are, in fact, on pensions. I suppose one could argue that there should not be any evictions. We would get back to the ludicrous situation caused by Tom Uren's crazy comments back in 1984. I do not think that is fair to anyone. Ultimately, it is not fair even to the bad tenants who are defaulting in rent payments. It is certainly not fair to the vast majority of Housing Trust tenants who pay their rent and who quite reasonably expect that everyone else should do the same thing.

That rent is significantly rebated in the vast majority of Housing Trust cases - about 90 per cent of them - because those people are on either full-rebated rent or part-rebated rent and, accordingly, pay only a fraction of the market rent. In those sorts of situations the money raised from that rent could be used to assist Housing Trust tenants generally, and that money is used to assist Housing Trust tenants generally in terms of maintenance, et cetera. Basically, anything that has a good chance of endangering the money the Housing Trust gets from its rents, I think, should be resisted

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