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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 14 Hansard (10 December) . . Page.. 4805 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

Mr Speaker, I do not think we have come to the end, by any stretch of the imagination, of dealing with issues in this area. I would imagine that whatever government is elected in February next year will have to deal with all the recommendations of the working party and also, no doubt, with issues given rise to by the Federal legislation. At a meeting last Friday in Canberra of State, Territory and Federal Ministers responsible for small business and fair trading, there was extensive discussion about the direction that should be taken with respect to that Federal report and related issues, and it will be a matter of ongoing debate and concern by governments across Australia. The ACT Government that comes in next year will have to take on board those same issues.

Mr Speaker, this Bill, as amended by the amendments that I will put forward, is a step in the right direction, and I hope that members will be prepared to remain open-minded about how to improve this area. There have been at times quite voluble and on occasions fairly unbalanced statements about what needs to be done to be able to improve this area to deliver justice to parties in this area, particularly the tenants. I have spent a great deal of time in the last three years listening to the concerns of tenants and I believe it is important that the Assembly acts to address their concerns about problems in this area.

It is the Government's intention, for example, that we should look at the question of improving access to mediation services as a way of providing a low-cost option for those in a tenancy dispute. Even the Tenancy Tribunal, at the present time, entails some cost in many cases for those seeking to come before it, and costs are often inequitably capable of being borne by the parties where a tenant is taking action against a landlord or is facing action of a certain kind by a landlord. Therefore, access to other forms of resolving problems and disputes is called for, and I believe we need to do work in the area of making mediation more accessible and more affordable in this field. For the moment, I think the amendments to this legislation will go a great deal of the way towards providing the protection that I think tenants, particularly, are entitled to. I would recommend to members, therefore, that they support the Bill, but with the amendments which I have tabled.

MS HORODNY (11.41): The Greens will be supporting Mr Moore's legislation. We believe it provides wider coverage of protection for tenants by increasing access to the Tenancy Tribunal for small businesses. Mr Moore's legislation removes size restrictions on who can appear before the tribunal, and it also addresses the issue of excessive rents. The Tenancy Tribunal Act and the code are supposed to address the imbalance between tenants and landlords, but there are many flaws in the legislation and in the code. For example, the code has only limited application to existing leases, and there is no right to renew leases or no right to compensation where a landlord refuses consent to the transfer of a lease. There are, as members would be aware, many unfair practices going on which disadvantage small businesses and where they do not have access to a fair hearing in the tribunal. We have been lobbied quite heavily by landlord groups over the past few weeks to oppose Mr Moore's Bill. The landlords argued that Mr Moore's Bill is one-sided, but I would argue that the legislation at the moment is tilted in favour of landlords. This Bill is attempting to redress that balance and tilt the favour a little bit more fairly back the other way, towards small business. All this Bill is saying is that tenants who are subjected to excessive rents should have access to a fair hearing. Landlords should not have anything to fear if they are confident that they are not charging excessive rents.

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