Bradford Sue: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Bradford Sue: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 Way back in the 1999-2002 Parliament I sat on the Social Services Committee and heard submissions on a Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill that for the first time aimed at providing better protection for landlords and tenants especially in boarding-house situations. Our committee travelled the length of the country to hear many submissions and spent weeks on consideration of the matters involved. Then the bill simply disappeared into thin air never to be seen again. I thought that this was a great pity after all the work that MPs officials and submitters—and there were many of them—had done on it. So it was with surprise and interest that I noted the return of a Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill—at last—to Parliament under Labour last year and now a different version of the bill this year with National. In a qualified kind of way I look forward to going through the whole process again albeit with somewhat different raw material to work with than the first time around. 
The Green Party is sorry that some of Labour’s original provisions have been lost—for example agents losing the right to charge a letting fee a limit on tenants’ liability for property damage and allowing for payment for professional tenant advocates at tenancy tribunal hearings. 
The latest manifestation of the bill is complex proposing a large number of amendments to the Residential Tenancies Act. The Green Party supports some of these amendments. For example there is clarification of a whole lot of comparatively minor matters such as provisions relating to the address for service of documents relating to tenancies the fact that landlords must give a reason for terminating a periodic tenancy with fewer than 90 days’ notice the provision that an agreement for sale and purchase must be unconditional before a landlord can give 42 days’ notice and the requirement that a landlord who is overseas for more than 21 days has to appoint an agent. 
However the bigger issue here is that once again the Government is moving to bring boarding houses under the residential tenancies legislation—something the Green Party has always supported. Although we welcome this first step we are also concerned that the bill’s provisions are woefully inadequate in so far as providing security of tenure for boarding-house residents is concerned. In terms of the bill as it has evolved now the devil is in the detail. For example the provisions for landlords to give notice of termination of boarding-house tenancies risk increasing homelessness. The bill provides that a boarding-house landlord can give 28 days’ notice of termination for no reason at all and we believe that tenants deserve greater security of tenure than this implies. 
Clauses permitting a boarding-house landlord to end a tenancy with no notice period whatsoever if the tenant merely threatens to cause disruption to other tenants are potentially subject to abuse. Many people who live in boarding houses are among the most vulnerable in our society. They are often under financial stress and at times coping with physical mental or intellectual impairment. Boarding-house residents deserve the same sensitivity—and in same cases even greater sensitivity—from the law and from landlords that other citizens receive because of these vulnerabilities. I do not think they should be subject to immediate eviction just because in a heated moment they have for example made a comment threatening disruption. 
The 48-hour termination of a boarding-house tenancy if the tenant is more than 7 days in arrears with the rent is also unduly harsh. There are times when tenants will get behind with their rent—for example because of difficulties with Work and Income. Often enough this is because of problems caused by the department rather than by the beneficiary. Such issues can take time to work out and I can see no reason why the 3-week arrears requirement that applies to other residential tenancies before a tenancy can be terminated by the landlord should not apply in the case of boarding houses. 
Provisions in the bill concerning the termination of a residential tenancy following the death of a tenant do nothing to improve the current situation where a caregiving relative is suddenly evicted from his or her home following the death of a family member for whom he or she has been caring. Relatives of a tenant in these circumstances deserve I believe to have at least some security of tenure when the tenant dies even if this is under tightly limited conditions. 
The bill continues and increases from $3000 to $6000 the monetary threshold for the right to legal representation in the Tenancy Tribunal and carries on with the current unfair provisions that permit a corporate landlord to be otherwise represented by an experienced tenancy manager. At the same time the tenant who often knows little or nothing about tenancy law and may well have English as a second language or literacy difficulties is forced to represent himself or herself. This places many people at an unfair disadvantage in Tenancy Tribunal proceedings in a situation where the power imbalance is already significant. 
I hope that during the select committee process and when the bill comes back to the House some of us may be able to persuade a majority of members to amend the bill in a number of areas in ways that will significantly improve it including making provision for tenant advocates as the Labour bill originally intended. Indeed the Green Party would like to have seen a bill before the House tonight that was much closer to Labour’s original bill. We would also like to have seen the shifting of standard tenancy conditions towards more secure and predictable tenure arrangements and the provision of a simple legal framework for long-term as well as short-term tenancies. We are sorry that the bill does not make more progress in this direction. 
However on balance the Green Party has decided to support the bill through its first reading. I will put my energies into listening to submissions and hopefully working with others to ensure that this bill comes back to the House in an improved form before too much time goes by. 
In the time since the first version of this bill came before Parliament all those years ago a lot has changed in the housing situation in this country. More than a million people rent around 450000 properties at this time and the proportion of those of us renting as opposed to those living in their own homes is increasing constantly as homeownership continues to be impossibly out of the reach of many. At a time like this it behoves all of us in the House to work together to improve the legislative framework around the residential rental market for the protection of owners and tenants alike. I hope that a spirit of fairness and justice will underpin our consideration of this bill as we move towards a society in which renting becomes much more the norm than it was in earlier generations and in which it will become even more important that equity and clear process underpin all legislation in this area.