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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 09 Hansard (Tuesday, 17 August 2004) . . Page.. 3783 ..

The new system, which runs parallel to the existing tenancy agreement system, is a core set of occupancy principles which can be enforced by the Residential Tenancies Tribunal. There is also a process established for developing more formal sets of core agreements by regulations, in consultation with stakeholders, to apply to the different short-term occupancies, along with a set of general principles, which I am essentially reading with slight paraphrases from the ES.

Those principles will reaffirm the rights of occupants under such agreements to maintain a reasonable standard of living conditions. There was some confusion in the community about whether they applied to caravans, and about the application of the principles to supported accommodation more generally. The answer on these points is that both these groups come under the occupancy principles provisions. I appreciate the willingness within the department to work with members of the community who came forward with concerns demonstrating recognition that the best outcomes are developed by genuine ongoing consultation, meaning that consultation with the community is more than simply asking for input at an early stage.

The act still does not apply in relation to a retirement village in which a person makes a payment to the entity administering the scheme, in consideration of being admitted as a resident of the complex. Nor does it apply to a nursing home or hostel for aged or disabled people conducted by an eligible organisation under the Commonwealth Aged or Disabled Persons Care Act 1954. The question of fair and respectful treatment, or relations, between residents and landlords, owners, management or even staff in these situations is dealt with to some degree in other legislation.

The fair trading legislation and code of practice cover the particularly described group of retirement villages. Whether it does it well is another question but, because of the other arrangements in place, they are left out of this bill. The second category, specifically exempted where there is a care relationship between the residents and the owners or managers, is covered—again at least in law—by Commonwealth legislation. There is also the capacity for exemptions to be applied in regulations.

The bill has refined definitions of what it means to be a lessor and a tenant, clarifying the chains of agreement that exist. For instance, where a company leases a property for the purpose of providing one of its staff with a home, the residential tenancy agreement is not between the owner and the company because it is not an agreement for the company to reside in the house. However, the agreement between the company and the staff member may be a residential tenancy agreement.

People who live in caravan parks have not previously been supported by residential tenancies legislation. The question of how to provide protection for van park residents has several times been not quite resolved. There was a reference to the Community Law Reform Committee in 1990 and, after issuing a discussion paper, it received submissions in 1999. But, as far as I know, there was never a final report and it was left out of the first version of this act.

New South Wales took the approach of establishing a code of practice and having particular clauses in their law on residential tenancies. According to the government, this one-size-fits-all approach has created problems because there are so many different

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