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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 4 Hansard (7 May) . . Page.. 1101 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

because ultimately that impacts on the vast majority of our tenants who go about their business, who are good tenants, who pay their rent, who do the right thing and who have every right to expect a proper level of service as a result. Mr Speaker, in summary: This private members Bill really has very little merit. It causes a lot more problems than it solves. It is not supported by the Government. I remind members, once again, of the imminence of the proposed Residential Tenancies Bill.

MS REILLY (5.46), in reply: Again we hear that new legislation is coming. I think people are probably bored stiff hearing that new legislation is coming. I suppose there should be a gold star handed out for consistency; it has been promised and promised. We have competitive neutrality but no legislation. Consider the times we are in at the moment. We are waiting for the Federal budget next week; we had the ACT budget yesterday. There were some very interesting aspects in the ACT housing budget. There are rumours - and you can look at some of the indications from the way the Federal Liberal Government is going - of great cuts to housing. It is rumoured the cuts could be between $100m and $800m. This is going to force more people into private rental accommodation. That is one of the obvious outcomes of this change.

We have the situation here in the ACT - and, unfortunately, it is not alone in Australia - where we have absolutely lousy residential tenancies legislation. There does not seem to be any commitment to changing that legislation. We have a time of great change in the delivery of housing and a time when the public sector is going to be competing with the private sector. Maybe that is the competitive neutrality that we are talking about. But we do not have legislation that assists all tenants in the sector. Instead, we are stuck with the Landlord and Tenant Act 1949, which, in the case of ACT Housing, is propped up by an 1899 New South Wales Landlord and Tenant Act. This legislation is nearly 100 years old and in fact predates public housing provision as we know it in Australia, which has been strong in its provision since about 1944. It is going to be interesting to see how much we can muck it up in the next few years as we change the way we deliver housing to people on low incomes in Australia. We have legislation that is not going to assist anyone as we embark on this new scenario.

Very good residential tenancies legislation is desired by all governments, landlords, investors and, most particularly, tenants. It assists all parties. But there is a decided lack of such legislation in Australia. One of the reasons why there is such poor residential tenancies legislation currently in Australia is that the private rental market is only a residual market; it is unplanned and poorly regulated in a whole lot of ways, not just tenancy matters. But we are going through a period now where we are going to encourage the greater use of private tenancies. That is also going to be one of the impacts of yesterday's budget.

That is why it is even more important that we have legislation that protects all tenants in the ACT. These amendments would empower public tenants in particular because they would provide more transparency of process for people who are public tenants and who may be in the process of being evicted from a public housing tenancy. They would also provide efficiency in the system, as I mentioned when I introduced the legislation, because people would be aware of what the process would be when the eviction processes were started.

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