Page 394 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 18 February 2020
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apartment design guide review and, in particular, the ACT planning strategy, which has us moving towards 70 per cent of new development within our current urban footprint.
This reform forms an important component supporting the government’s delivery of the ACT planning strategy to deliver a city that is compact and efficient, diverse, sustainable and resilient, livable and accessible. Canberra will continue to be a compact and efficient city in the landscape, with more growing up and not out. Reform to our unit titles legislation is a key way that the government can deliver on this objective and other themes of the ACT planning strategy.
In complementing the work of the better building quality reforms, a number of the managing buildings better reforms put the physical integrity of buildings front and centre. This is achieved through a number of new measures which require developers and owners corporations to discuss and clearly communicate maintenance responsibilities to owners. By implementing these reforms, we are working to ensure well-maintained buildings into the future and making it clearer to owners and buyers what their responsibilities are when it comes to ongoing building infrastructure and maintenance.
There are numerous important milestones and key benefits included in the bill. First, it includes amendments which formally recognise the application of the Human Rights Act and the Discrimination Act and the important role they have within decision-making and management of owners corporations under the Unit Titles (Management) Act 2011. The inclusion of these will mean that these essential rights will need to be considered when owners corporations make or amend their rules, particularly in consideration that developers and owners corporations will now be able to tailor their rules to the needs of the building and its owners and occupiers. Recognition of these rights will provide safeguards that owners corporations will need to take into account to make sure that rules are fair, equitable and non-discriminatory.
The bill has also taken into consideration the recent changes to the Residential Tenancies Act 1997 in relation to pets. Those changes, which commenced late last year, have recognised the issues tenants experience and improved the ability for a tenant to keep a pet in rental accommodation. This bill recognises this shift in policy and has been developed to complement these changes for tenants. Owners corporations will now be able to have pet-friendly rules, making it clear to tenants whether a potential rental property in a unit plan will be suitable for them and their pets and what the process will be. Further, landlords will be able to disclose information more readily to potential tenants about the status of any pet-friendly policy in the unit plan, resulting in a more transparent process for all parties involved.
In addition, the bill will improve consumer rights through significant changes to the Civil Law (Property) Act 2006 and the Civil Property (Sale of Residential Property) Act 2003. New disclosure requirements for buyers of new and existing unit plans will give greater power to buyers to receive information and updates about new developments. Comprehensive information for a potential purchaser is clearly critical to give the purchaser a clear idea of the nature of the unit, and the set of rights and
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