Page 240 - Week 01 - Thursday, 13 February 2020
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It is important to ensure that tenants are given appropriate legislative protection. As Mr Parton pointed out, a greater proportion of people are tenants than in the past and people stay in rental accommodation for longer. We now have many more people with children living in rental properties as long-term housing tenure, regardless of whether this is by choice or otherwise.
If we had a high vacancy rate—over 10 per cent, or even over two or three per cent—amendments like this would be much less of an issue. The invisible hand of the market would sort it out. People would leave if they could not stand the house, if it was in poor condition or if they could not cope with how they were being treated as tenants. Landlords would be competing to offer the best house in the best condition. As Mr Parton pointed out, this is not the situation. We have a vacancy rate of less than one per cent in the ACT, and it is unlikely to be the situation for a long time.
Given that situation, we must have in place some basic protections for tenants, and that is what this bill is trying to do. I do take Mr Parton’s point that supply is all-important, and reducing supply is not what we are trying to do.
As the old aphorism goes, governments are there to protect people from market failure. There is another line to this, noting that the not-for-profit sector is there to protect people from government failure. But I will not continue down this path, noting the unfortunate demise of the Tenants’ Union.
Minister Ramsay has already detailed some of the measures in this bill. I am particularly pleased to see the inclusion of a number of measures, such as strengthening and clarifying the role of ACAT in a number of ways, including in relation to tenancy changes in family violence situations, and reducing the maximum amount of bond payable from the current four weeks rent in advance to two weeks rent in advance. That one will really make a difference for people who find it very hard to have two lots of bonds out at one time. Another measure is to increase the amount of time that tenants have to move out if a landlord or family member wishes to move in from four to eight weeks.
Perhaps the most gratifying inclusion in this bill is the inclusion of new regulatory powers regarding minimum standards. This is, sadly, somewhat bittersweet. My colleague Shane Rattenbury tried to introduce minimum standards for rentals in 2011. Sadly, if predictably, this was not supported by the Liberals or Labor.
More recently, in February last year, I brought forward an amendment to the Residential Tenancies Act which would have seen the introduction of minimum standards. Again it was voted down. This time it was voted down by the same minister who, only seven months later, proposed some of his own. In February last year, when speaking against my amendment that would have introduced minimum standards, Minister Ramsay said, regarding Minister Rattenbury’s attempt to introduce minimum standards in 2011:
The government of the day, including the then Attorney-General, Simon Corbell MLA, described the intention of the bill as noble, but had concerns about how it would operate in practice. These included considering whether the costs of retrofitting, to bring rental properties up to the minimum standards, would be
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