Without any response from the state government to the TUQ’s request for specific, time-limited funding to represent tenants’ interests in the current tenancy law review, today marks the last day there is funding for any independent tenant advocate in the state. That means, after today, not one cent of the $34M of the interest generated on tenants’ bonds last year will be applied to any independent tenant advice service or for any tenant advocate to raise tenants’ interests in the current legislative review, which will continue next year.
This is not a sustainable outcome and will only serve to undermine people’s confident in the outcomes of the legislative review and impartiality of the Residential Tenancies Authority.
Tenant advocates have lobbied for tenant/landlord regualtory systems since the mid 1980s when there was no accessible process for a tenant to seek the return of a bond regardless of how the property was left. Getting a bond back was often difficult, sometimes impossible until the introduction of the then Rental Bond Act 1989 regulating the process and limited access to independent tenant advice. Continue reading