Page 1910 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 14 May 2013
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The ACT has a strong legislative regulatory framework which can only be enhanced by participation in a national regulatory system—for example, through helping to increase economies of scale, reducing the regulatory burden and sharing resources. A national approach to regulation seeks to overcome the barriers, gaps and inconsistencies that have arisen through each state and territory regulating community housing providers in a different way.
Registrars will have formal mechanisms for regular communication and will work together for national consistency, while the responsive nature of regulatory implementation will ensure that local contexts inform regulatory interaction and decision making.
As I said on presenting the bill, the Community Housing Providers National Law (ACT) Bill 2013 will safeguard the interests of vulnerable tenants, including women, older people and young people, as well as government and other investment in community housing.
It will achieve this by encouraging the development of social and affordable housing, by providing for the registration of housing agencies, and the regulation and monitoring of registered housing agencies against standards known as the regulatory code.
The national regulatory system includes a minimum set of rules, requirements and powers necessary to appropriately manage risks, a clear separation between regulatory activities and policy and funding activities, and staged, proportionate step-in provisions for the regulator sufficient to ensure that government and finance partners can protect their interest in tenants and assets in the event of provider distress, default or failure.
The national regulatory system has three tiers of registration. It operates using a risk management approach, resulting in the level of regulatory oversight being proportionate to the level of risk relevant to the operations of providers.
The Community Housing Providers National Law empowers the registrar to register, monitor the activities of and deregister housing providers and undertake enforcement actions. The consequence of deregistration would be the loss of any tied government assistance and publicly funded assets.
The national regulatory system will have a registrar of housing agencies in each state and territory. In the ACT the registrar will exercise the functions under the act subject to the control and direction of his or her minister. The ACT registrar will be the director-general responsible for administering the act.
The national regulatory code sets out the performance outcomes and requirements that must be met by registered community housing providers under the national regulatory system. The administration of the national regulatory system will be guided by a set of regulatory principles. I note that the powers of the registrar and the regulatory requirements are almost the same as those under the ACT’s current regulatory system, established by part 4A of the Housing Assistance Act 2007, amended in 2008.
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