Prasad Rajen: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Prasad Rajen: Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:654;Page:3839] 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour) 
: 
 I am thankful for the opportunity to speak in the first reading of the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill 2009. As the Minister for Building and Construction said the housing market has changed dramatically and there are any number of different types of arrangements available to people to use the rental market for their needs. It is time to update this legislation. In doing so we should keep in mind that we are talking about the one place in our lives that gives us stability. It is the one place we all try to create where we can house our children be ourselves and develop a base from which to participate in society. It is one place where we can be safe and make sure that our loved ones are safe as well. This is also the base from which we as individuals friends and families care for each other. From there we care for our family members those who come to visit us our elderly and those who might need us in different amounts from time to time. Therefore our home is very important and it is no less important for the individual family or couple that enters the rental market for whatever reason whether by choice or by need. 
John Hayes 
: Or caring landlords. 
Dr RAJEN PRASAD 
: I will come to that. So it is very important to us from the point of view I have just described. 
The home is important to the tenant and the home in all of its complexity exerts very powerful influences on who we are on our lives and on our successes. At the same time a person who saves money decides to purchase a property as an investment and makes it available to a tenant—whether the tenant is a family or an individual—has also made sacrifices and he or she is entitled to expect a fair return on their investment. Those are the two sides of the rental market in all of its forms. Stripped of all of its complexity there are two competing needs. One is for the investor to get a fair return and to make sure his property is well provided; secondly there is the need for the tenant to continue to live and do the things from their base that we all take for granted. Our tenancy legislation provides a fair balance between those two needs. This amendment bill establishes those rules and clarifies the responsibilities for each party. So the bill has many very good provisions and it addresses the changes that have taken place in that particular market. For example protection is extended under this bill to those tenants who live in boarding houses. We had not thought about them for a long time and the boarding houses that I remember from when I visited many people living in them both in my professional life and in my student days were a very mixed bag. The protections of this bill will be extended to that environment as well. 
The bill also clarifies responsibilities for outgoings by introducing overarching principles to indicate when landlords and tenants are responsible for charges such as rates and electricity. The bill introduces a clearer and fairer process for terminating and renewing tenancies to provide an appropriate balance between flexibility and certainty of tenure. So there are many good things to manage that tension between the needs of the tenant and the expectations of the landlord. The bill encourages landlords and tenants to comply with their obligations under the Residential Tenancies Act by increasing the value of existing fines and exemplary damages in producing new censures. It provides for the majority of tenancy disputes to be resolved quickly. There are many provisions that are very useful. 
We know that things can go wrong in tenancy agreements. When they do we require a fair process by which those disputes can be resolved. The proposals here do not give me the confidence that for example there is sufficient assistance by way of advocacy for a tenant who may or may not be in a position to deal with the kinds of difficulties that arise and whether we have given enough thought to that particular situation. I am pleased that the bill will go before the Social Services Committee and we will be looking to see whether the balance we seek between those two sets of competing demands is there and whether the provisions are tilted towards the interests of one and not the other. For example turfing anybody out of a home for whatever reason is a very serious matter and it is not just an economic consideration that needs to be put in place. A system needs to occur that tries to balance those two needs. It ought to address the various aspects of that balance. 
So what systems are in place? We need to inquire into those systems. Some are proposed in this particular legislation but are they the right ones? Certainly as a member of the Social Services Committee I am interested to see what those who have more experience in the contemporary market are saying about this. What are the more modern ways of solving disputes? When a landlord turfs out a family with children for whatever reason—whatever it is that the adults have done to compromise the living environments of the vulnerable members of the family—then in a decent society we balance their rights with those two means. We should try to develop a system that does not favour one side over the other. I know at times that might be difficult. Here we are we have provisions in this bill for when somebody in the home has assaulted somebody else and those provisions then are in a sense quite Draconian. Are they the appropriate ones? Are they the ones that will work? We should at least ask advocates of some sort from both sides who have conceded right from the beginning that there are these two competing needs: those of the investor or the landlord and those of the families that occupy the residence. In a decent society the interests of both are important but certainly the interests of the vulnerable members of a particular family are as important as those of the landlord. 
In the select committee we ought to inquire beyond the proposed provisions of this particular amendment bill and into those systems and whether they should be revamped and or improved. I shall listen very carefully to those who present from their particular experiences and I give an assurance that it will be in the interests of the landlords and those who have made an investment as well as of those families and individuals who are likely to suffer tremendous harm if we do not get that balance right. For example children and vulnerable women who are turfed out into the street and into worse accommodation create for us as a society a bigger bill that somewhere down the track we have to provide money for. We will have to make provisions to address their situation as well. There are some very important competing demands that we shall be looking at in the select committee.