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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 09 Hansard (Tuesday, 17 August 2004) . . Page.. 3781 ..

The occupancy principle set out in new section 71E will give occupants greater confidence when asking the manager of their premises to fix defects in the property—as is their right—and some confidence that the manager cannot arbitrarily evict them for trying to enforce that right. If the manager does try to evict them, he or she can only do it with reasonable notice. They can then use the required dispute settlement process or, ultimately, the Residential Tenancies Tribunal to enforce those rights. Giving these vulnerable residents some protection against arbitrary eviction is a step forward, so I am quite happy to support these changes.

I welcome a number of other provisions in this bill such as the definition of “quiet enjoyment”. I welcome the provisions relating to the tribunal and hope the changes mean that the tribunal starts serving to educate the community about tenancy law. However, I was disappointed that the bill did not contain any provisions to regulate the use of private tenancy databases known to many in the tenants’ rights sector as “tenancy blacklists” because of the way they operate. With the current tight rental vacancy rates, tenants need to be protected against discrimination. It is not fair that real estate agents and private landlords can use either very old or inaccurate information to decide the outcome of an application to lease a property.

The New South Wales government has announced that it will regulate tenancy databases, and the Queensland government has already passed legislation to do so. ACT tenants deserve the same level of protection, so it is disappointing that this bill does not address that issue. I believe this is a lost opportunity to make some changes. The real disappointment lies in the fact that this was not picked up by the government in their review of the Residential Tenancies Act. We were therefore not able to have a discussion, during that review, to find out the best way to deal with regulating blacklists in the ACT. This is something that will have to be revisited in the sixth Assembly.

While supporting the provisions in the bill, there is concern that it has a severely delayed commencement date. I am glad we have an amendment on the table to bring that date back by a year. I sincerely hope that amendment succeeds. Tenants who have been waiting for these proposed changes will see them operating sooner.

MS TUCKER (9.12): The Greens will be supporting this bill, which is the result of a long and consultative workshop process to review the Residential Tenancies Act. Changes have been developed via a working group run by the justice and community safety law group, including a range of people with experience as stakeholders. The focus in this process has been on balancing the interests of the various parties—or, to put it crudely, the landlords versus the tenants. This has been the hallmark of this legislation to date. It has meant that some issues I would like to have seen brought in were not agreed. However, in the end, the people who represented the interests of tenants are satisfied with the results.

When the Assembly created the Residential Tenancies Act in 1997 a number of important matters were left unresolved. They included protection for boarders and lodgers and residents of caravan parks, and means to better look after victims of domestic violence. The bill deals with the first of these two points, and there is a promise of work underway to address the latter.

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