Page 3339 - Week 08 - Thursday, 23 August 2012
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Again, I would like to thank my fellow committee members, Ms Porter and Mr Hanson. Ms Porter was not involved at the time of the hearings, but I thank her for her contribution to this report. I would also like to thank the committee secretary, Andrew Snedden, for the work he has put into getting all these reports done and tabled in the Assembly. I would also like to thank all the people who made submissions and appeared before the committee.
Mr Corbell interjecting—
Mrs Dunne interjecting—
MR SPEAKER: Mrs Dunne and Mr Corbell, please take it outside. Order, members! I invite you to take it outside or I can enforce that. Let us proceed to you, Ms Bresnan.
MS BRESNAN: I would like to thank all the groups and individuals who made submissions to this inquiry and also for appearing at hearings. We heard from universities, student groups and organisations that are involved in promoting the rights of residents of rental properties and the like. Student accommodation is an issue in the ACT, as it is around the country. One of the things that came up was around regional students, particularly students going to CIT who might be doing apprenticeships. They fall through the cracks, in a way, because they are younger; sometimes they cannot live on their own and they face affordability issues.
The federal government has brought in a provision around low socioeconomic students, and that is going to have an impact on the whole country as well as the ACT, where we know there is a lack of student accommodation, although more is being constructed and the universities are investing in that. We know that often students can be vulnerable in terms of being charged too much rent and not being aware of what their rights are.
I will just go to a couple of the recommendations. Firstly, the committee recommended that, through the government’s affordable housing action plan, there be a consideration of student accommodation and how it can be supported and developed. It is a key part of our housing infrastructure because we have a number of students from across the country coming to our national institutions and CIT. We also heard from student groups about having student housing cooperative models. The committee also recommends that the government explore this model and look at what has been developed in other jurisdictions.
One of the issues that came up very clearly from a number of groups was around the Residential Tenancies Act and that often people are not aware of their rights and responsibilities and we need to review the act to look at particular areas. That includes definitions of occupancy, standardised occupancy agreements, standardised provisions on evictions, and to include arbitration, provisions around the lodgement of bonds and the process for how occupancy rules are developed and changed and the provision of information to tenants on their rights and responsibilities. If we look into those processes we can possibly improve what we have, stop people being unnecessarily evicted and also make people aware of what their rights and responsibilities are. I thank everyone who contributed to this report and I commend it to the Assembly.
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