Residential Tenancies (Protection of Prospective Tenants) Amendment Bill
Tuesday 2 May 2023
Ms CLANCY (Elder) (12:20): I rise today in support of the Residential Tenancies (Protection of Prospective Tenants) Amendment Bill 2023 to amend the Residential Tenancies Act 1995. Rarely does a day go by where I do not have a member of my community contact my office seeking support for a housing issue. A family of seven whose lease is about to expire and after attending more than 20 rental inspections has been unsuccessful. A woman and her son living in a caravan park when their lease expired also could not find a rental. There have been many couples living with one set of parents for a few months to save up for a house, with those few months extending to years.
I know this is not a unique experience for my electorate, or indeed broader South Australia; this is an issue right across the country. After years and years of neoliberal 'leave it to the market, cross your fingers and hope it works out' housing policy, nobody should be surprised that we find ourselves in the situation we see today. Census data from 2021 tells us that over 7,000 South Australians are experiencing homelessness, a number likely underestimated given the temporary accommodation provided at the time this data was collected in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Access to housing is a human right—article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights tells us so. The right to housing is more than simply a right to shelter, but a right to have somewhere to live that is at least adequate. We acknowledge this human right and understand that every South Australian deserves to have a roof over their head and to be safe and secure in a place they call home.
In my electorate, and electorates right across this country—not just South Australia—the message is clear: wages and welfare payments are not keeping up with the rising cost of living. The gaps in our economy are getting so large that even affluent middle-class families cannot begin to imagine how their children will ever be able to afford to move out of home one day.
How did we get here? Once upon a time, the dream of buying your first home was part of becoming an adult. Moving out of home, growing up, independence and the life skills and experience it brings are all now unachievable for so many in our community. Now we need to have grown-up conversations about what it is going to take to fix this crisis. We need to have grown-up conversations, no more, 'But we had 18 per cent inflation when we bought our first home.'
We need to ask ourselves if it is appropriate for government to provide more support for someone buying their 15th home than someone who is buying their first. We need to ask ourselves if it is appropriate that tax concessions be awarded to the owners of the vacant homes that make up 10 per cent of Australia's total housing stock, according to last year's ABS figures. We may not have all the answers, but we need to ask these questions without whataboutisms and juvenile debate because these questions will lead us back to the purpose of the housing market: to provide our community with homes, not to make a quick buck.
While house prices are starting to moderate, the median house price in South Australia increased to $595,000 in the December 2022 quarter, an increase of 36.8 per cent on the December 2019 quarter. Similarly, for metropolitan Adelaide, the median house price has increased by 38.1 per cent over the same period, reaching $670,000 last year. This may be great for existing home owners and especially for those with multiple properties, but even they are concerned for what this unsustainable growth will mean for their children and their grandchildren in addition to the already thousands of Australians looking for shelter.
I am very proud that one of the top priorities of this government was to review the Residential Tenancies Act, legislation which has not been comprehensively looked at in almost a decade. With renters making up a third of the housing market, getting the balance right and supporting South Australian renters will go a long way to supporting a fairer housing market.
This review, announced by the Minister for Consumer and Business Affairs last year, will aid our government in delivering an ambitious reform agenda that puts providing South Australians with a safe and secure place to call home back at the centre of government housing market policy. I would like to sincerely thank the minister for her work in this area and for bringing this bill to the house. I would also like to thank her office and her staff, but I feel like the member for Playford has probably listed everybody efficiently. I will leave it at that, but thank you very much to the department as well.
This bill to amend the Residential Tenancies Act 1995 seeks to improve affordability for South Australian renters and better protect their rights and privacy in the housing market. We introduced this bill in addition to our review not to pre-empt what the community has to say but to address the immediate priorities that have already been identified as part of the Malinauskas Labor government's plan for a better housing future.
Our housing market is under immense pressure. As South Australians are trying to find a home in a market where fewer are available and the ones that are available cost more to purchase or rent, this growth is unsustainable and only worsens market conditions, which are simply not in the best interests of South Australians. To respond to these conditions, our $965 million plan for a better housing future seeks to deliver more social and affordable homes, greater protections for those who are renting, more affordable opportunities to rent and more support for South Australians to buy their first home.
Since our election in March last year, the South Australian economy has gone from strength to strength. Now ranked second in the nation, our economy is driven by population growth and construction as we continue to outperform the Eastern States, but as the pie gets bigger we need to make sure that everybody's slice gets bigger at the same time. As our population grows, so too does the demand for housing, reducing the supply of available housing and driving up rents.
While some may be tempted by prejudice and political pointscoring to suggest the way we improve housing supply is to limit immigration, those of us on this side of the house understand that you can increase housing supply and support the immigration that only serves to strengthen our state. That is why we have released critical land in Adelaide's north and south to allow the development of nearly 2,000 homes. It is also why we are building an additional 564 public homes and stopping the sale of 580 others. That is an additional 1,144 public homes for South Australia over the next three years.
Earlier this year, I was incredibly excited to join the Minister for Human Services on a visit to some of these new homes that are being built in my community. These accessible homes are being made by local builders and with quality Australian steel in the suburb of St Marys in my electorate. I cannot wait for the construction of these homes to soon be completed and to welcome new tenants to the community I am so deeply honoured to represent.
These two homes I visited are being built on a block that previously had one home on it with a very big garden and are a really great size both inside and out. We want people in public housing to be able to truly enjoy their homes, and where appropriate we want people to be able to age in place. Building homes with many accessibility features and much more manageable gardens helps to facilitate that.
We understand that the crises facing our housing market come from forgetting the core purpose of housing—to provide a safe and secure home for South Australians. Leaving the housing market to just do its thing has failed South Australians and this bill addresses some of the worst aspects of an underregulated profits before people market.
This bill prohibits rental properties being advertised at a price range and prevents landlords or agents from soliciting higher offers, a practice commonly referred to as rent bidding. Rent bidding only serves to squeeze every last dollar out of rental hunters in an already competitive and expensive market. The government's role is to support South Australians to find a home, not allow them to be taken advantage of.
In addition to this reform, third parties, which often include websites facilitating tenant application forms, are prevented from engaging in rent bidding. These provisions intend to stop prospective tenants from being charged fees for background checks, assessments or ratings of their suitability for tenancy. I, like many others in this place, was disgusted by reports that agents would provide higher ratings for those who paid for their assessment or background check alongside providing a higher bid for rent.
The successful passage of this bill will prohibit rent bidding by landlords and agents, prevent a person in trade or commerce from providing an assessment or rating of a prospective tenant that is based on an offer of higher rent and disallow a person from receiving or requiring a prospective tenant to pay for an assessment or rating of their suitability for a tenancy.
This bill also provides for information to be prescribed in the regulations that must not be requested of a prospective tenant. There will be further targeted consultation on the information prescribed, which may potentially include the applicant's rental bond history, a statement for a credit or bank account containing daily transactions and any information about the applicant that relates to a protected attribute under equal opportunity legislation. This bill provides an expiation fee of $1,200 and/or a maximum penalty of $20,000 to apply for these offences. These reforms are reasonable and fair, bringing our rental market in line with much of Australia.
At the peak of supply shortages due to the COVID-19 pandemic, South Australians would have rioted if supermarkets began reserving toilet paper and asking customers who was prepared to pay more before they handed over their stock. I am sure that South Australians are equally disgusted when they are made aware of this misleading and dishonest practice in our rental market.
Another immediate priority of our plan for a better housing future was to provide more affordable residential tenancy bonds. I understand this is progressing through amendments to the Residential Tenancies Regulations 2010. Making tenancy bonds more affordable, particularly in this current housing climate, is incredibly important. As rental prices increase, renters of even moderately priced housing are too often required to provide a six-week rather than four-week rental bond—a near impossible task for South Australians trying to find affordable housing.
Landlords can currently claim residential bonds equivalent to a maximum six weeks' rent when the weekly rent is $250 or greater, with only a four-week bond entitled to be claimed for properties falling below that threshold. As rental prices only continue to increase, fewer and fewer homes in South Australia fall below this threshold. Our proposal to increase the threshold to $800 will ensure that for the majority of rental properties in South Australia only a four-week bond will be required. This will reduce the up-front cost to tenants by as much as $1,600, depending on the amount of rent they are paying.
The residential tenancies amendment bill also seeks to protect the information of South Australian tenants. Considering recent cybersecurity incidents that impacted so many in my electorate and communities from right across our state, this bill contains measures to protect tenants' information.
Our proposed reform will prohibit tenant information from being disclosed without their consent or as required by law, the tenancy agreement, a court or a tribunal. Successful tenant information will be required to be destroyed after three years and within 30 days of a tenancy agreement being executed for unsuccessful tenants. However, prospective tenants will still be able to consent to their information being held for up to six months to support looking for another home.
The data breaches of so many private companies have given South Australians a glimpse into the type of data that is kept and what that data is used for. As we are bombarded with terms and conditions that some lawyers would probably struggle to understand, these terms and conditions can also be easily ignored with the press of a button and then, before we know it, our personal information is sold to the highest bidder.
Regardless of with whom or where our data arrives, the intention remains the same: to sell us something we probably do not need. This bill will ensure that prospective tenants' information is not used for this purpose while allowing them to continue to be contacted by an agent of their choice should an appropriate opportunity for housing become available.
The reforms in this bill are our immediate priority before further consideration and consultation on the broader review of the Residential Tenancies Act. There is absolutely more to come. Consultation is currently under review on a number of issues facing renters, including renting with pets, longer tenancies and retaliatory evictions, just to name a few that are frequently brought up with me by members of my community.
Improving the Residential Tenancies Act will go a long way to addressing the housing crisis. By improving the rights and protections of renters, and ensuring landlords can continue to manage properties effectively, we acknowledge the human right of housing and strive to provide safe and secure housing for all.
This bill, our review of the Residential Tenancies Act, and our plan for a better housing future, show a clear shift in priorities regarding the housing market from those of the previous government. South Australians have made their voices clear. They want government intervention in a market that is not delivering for their interests.
You only need to sit in an EO for an afternoon or attend a rental housing inspection and see the huge line snaking down the road from the front door to see renting is becoming increasingly difficult—more difficult than I can ever remember. The goal of home ownership is verging on impossible for so many South Australians.
We were elected on a platform for delivering more public housing and a fairer rental market. Whether it is the largest release of residential land in our state's history, banning rent bidding or stopping the previous government's sale of public housing, South Australians know that this Malinauskas Labor government has their back in the housing and rental market. I commend this bill to the house.
