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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 11 Hansard (6 November) . . Page.. 3766 ..

MS REILLY (continuing):

So it is important that we have legislation that protects tenants who move out quickly, because the ACT is a small jurisdiction, and that lessors also have some protection from tenants who might take off. I think it is important to recognise that this legislation is looking after both the landlord and the tenant. It is not one-sided and this brings some balance to the whole process.

It is also important that we end up with modern, up-to-date residential tenancy legislation, particularly in relation to some of the changes that are being mooted through the national housing reforms. There is pressure to encourage or force, depending on your point of view, a number of public tenants to move into private rental accommodation. Rather than public tenancies being provided, there is talk that people will be in private rental arrangements and receiving income support. It is important that we have residential tenancy legislation that protects those people who may be on lower incomes, so as to ensure that they are getting housing that is adequately repaired and maintained. If anything goes wrong either way, they should have some protection, through a mechanism such as the Residential Tenancies Tribunal, to ensure that they are not done out of what is rightfully theirs through a tenancy agreement.

There was great discussion in recent times on working out what we need to do to get agreement about how we should run the residential tenancy agreements, what the prescribed terms should be, and whether you can have any amendments to those terms. After much discussion it was agreed amongst us all that, if there was going to be any change to the agreed terms, the prescribed terms, it was better that each party should have the opportunity to go before the tribunal. This should work out to be a more equitable system because each party appears before the tribunal as an individual.

We must make sure that when this happens it is done on an individual basis. It must not work out to be an excuse for an organisation, say ACT Housing, to take a class action and decide that ACT Housing will have a different and separate tenancy agreement from the other tenancy agreements in the system. Any amendments to the tenancy agreements must be done on an individual basis. No organisation - ACT Housing, of course, being the largest one - should be allowed, as a group, to change the tenancy agreement as set out in this Act. It was definitely agreed by all that the tenancy agreements should be done in this way. There should be the opportunity, if you want to make any amendments, to go before the tribunal; but it was recognised that this was to be on an individual basis, and it should not be seen as a class or group action. This applies to others, of course, not just ACT Housing.

The other important area that was looked at in relation to this legislation was the specialist tribunals. Having specialist tribunals is seen in a number of areas as being the way to go. The report entitled "Minimum Legislative Standards for Residential Tenancies in Australia" stated that specialist residential tenancy tribunals offer the best prospects for considered and fair resolution of residential tenancy disputes. That report was prepared by Kennedy, See and Sutherland in 1995. Obviously, there have to be some conditions to ensure that they work properly.

These are some of the issues that were of concern for a number of us when we considered this legislation. It was important to work out who was going to be part of the tribunal. If it was not going to be a separate independent body it had to have a broad range of people, and that is why the addition of other members to the tribunal is important.

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