Skip to content.
Return to Department of Building and Housing home page.

Summary of benefits of key reforms for Residential Tenancies Act 1986

The reforms will:

Extend the protection of the RTA (including access to advice, information and dispute resolution services) to more people involved in renting, such as tenants in retirement villages,  through: 

  • repealing section 5(l) of the RTA,  which exempts tenancies where the cost or value of meals or services provided by the landlord forms more than 20 percent of the rent 1
  • extending coverage of the RTA  to boarding house tenancies 2

Protect tenants from substantial liability for damage to the premises by limiting a tenant’s liability for damage to four times the weekly rent, if the tenant can show that:

  • the damage was caused carelessly, rather than recklessly or intentionally
  • the tenant did not personally cause the damage, or personally fail to takes reasonable steps to prevent it

Clarify responsibility for outgoings, such as rates and electricity charges,  by introducing overarching principles under which:

  • landlords are responsible for charges incurred regardless of whether the premises are occupied and charges for common facilities
  • tenants are responsible for charges which can be exclusively attributed to their occupation of the premises or their use of facilities

Introduce clearer and fairer processes for terminating and renewing tenancies, in order to provide an appropriate balance between flexibility and certainty of tenure, including: 

  • requiring landlords to state a reason if ending a periodic tenancy on less than 90 days’ notice, in order ensure that the grounds for termination are valid
  • providing for fixed-term tenancies of more than 90 days’ duration to automatically become periodic upon expiry, unless:
    • the parties enter into a new agreement, or
    • one of the parties gives written notice to the other of their intention not to enter into another tenancy, at least 21 days (but not more than 90 days) before the expiry of the term
  • allowing  a party to give short notice to end a tenancy where the premises are destroyed or so seriously damaged as to be uninhabitable due to a breach of the tenancy agreement by the other party, and where the party in breach is the landlord, allow the tenant to stop paying rent
  • allowing the Tenancy Tribunal to end a fixed term tenancy early if:
    • body corporate rules materially change during the course of a tenancy, and, in the view of the Tribunal, it would be unreasonable to require the tenant to continue with the tenancy
    • a tenant has received notice of a substantial rent increase and the amount of the increase was unforeseen and will cause severe hardship

Encourage landlords and tenants to comply with their obligations under the RTA through:

  • increasing the value of fines and exemplary damages that can be awarded for breaches of the RTA,  to ensure that the sanctions are meaningful and provide sufficient deterrent value
  • providing for some tenant breaches to attract exemplary damages as an alternative sanction to eviction
  • introducing sanctions for landlords who fail to comply with building, health and safety regulations

Provide for the  majority of tenancy disputes to be resolved quickly, fairly and cost effectively as a result :

  • increasing the Tenancy Tribunal’s monetary jurisdiction from $12 000.00 to $50 000.00
  • increasing the monetary threshold on the automatic right to use legal representation from $3000.00 to $6000.00, to ensure that legal representation is only used when justified
  • removing the current restriction on the use of lay representatives that have been regularly engaged in advocacy work before other tribunals, which limits the ability for existing tenant advocacy groups to provide assistance to tenants
  • requiring the Tenancy Tribunal to order the other party to a dispute to compensate the applicant for their filing fee, if the applicant’s claim was:
    • upheld in full by the Tribunal, or
    • partially upheld by the Tribunal, and in the opinion of the Tribunal it would be reasonable to make such an order

Improve the enforceability of Tenancy Tribunal orders by: 

  • giving the Tenancy Tribunal jurisdiction to make an order against a guarantor of a party to a tenancy agreement
  • allowing a party to recover reasonable private debt collection costs associated with enforcing a Tenancy Tribunal order
  • assisting Tenancy Tribunal creditors to locate debtors, by facilitating the release of address information held by government agencies to the District Court.

 

1 The RTA will continue to exclude tenancies where the premises constitute part of any hospital, home, or other institution for the care of sick, disabled, or aged persons. 
 2 Some of the rights and obligations of boarding house tenants will differ from other tenants, because of the different dynamics created by communal living. These differences include the way tenancies are terminated, the process for dealing with abandoned goods and the ability for landlords to make house rules.