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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 12 Hansard (12 November) . . Page.. 3977 ..
MR MOORE (10.31): Mr Speaker, before I present the Tenancy Tribunal (Amendment) Bill, I ask for leave to amend my notice by altering the year of the principal Act from 1995 to 1994. I believe that I have been hoist with my own petard. At the very time I was putting in the wrong date I was in the Assembly giving other people a hard time over putting 13 instead of 14. It comes back to visit you. If members would be generous enough to give me leave, I would appreciate it.
Leave granted.
MR MOORE: Mr Speaker, I present the Tenancy Tribunal (Amendment) Bill 1997, together with its explanatory memorandum.
Title read by Clerk.
MR MOORE: Mr Speaker, I move:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
This Bill seeks to provide a wider coverage of protection for both tenants and, to a much lesser extent, landowners by increasing access to the Tenancy Tribunal for small businesses. This amendment allows for those tenants who are subjected to paying excessive rents to apply to the Tenancy Tribunal for a fair hearing. Members of the last Assembly may remember that, with the passage of the Tenancy Tribunal Bill in 1994, only those who entered into a lease after that date were allowed access to the tribunal in order to have their grievances heard and resolved, even if the grievance arose after the Tenancy Tribunal Bill was passed.
Other members may recall that in 1996 I introduced a Bill to expand the range of people who could appear before the tribunal to include those who entered into a lease before 1 January 1995. I argued that the exclusion of those tenants who were not eligible had allowed a great deal of unfair practice in small businesses to go on without redress. Many of the small businesses who are striving to exist in the face of unfair increases in rent, advantages given to larger, franchise traders, breaches of mediated agreements, key money disputes, ratchet clauses and other generally unfair practices have no redress.
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