Residential Tenancy Disputes

Mr CREGAN (Kavel) (14:24): My question is to the Attorney-General. Will the Attorney outline to the house the swift steps the government is taking to ensure that residential tenancy disputes can be dealt with in the courts and tribunals of our state?

Mr MULLIGHAN: Point of order: that question contained debate.

The SPEAKER: I will listen to the question again. One thing I will say is that I will listen to the question in its entirety. Member for Kavel.

Mr CREGAN: My question is to the Attorney-General. Will the Attorney outline to the house the steps the government is taking to ensure that residential tenancy disputes can be properly dealt with in the courts and tribunals of this state?

Mr MULLIGHAN: Point of order: there is debate in that question, how those matters are dealt with, properly or otherwise.

The SPEAKER: I will allow the question.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General) (14:25): It is with pleasure that I answer this question for the member for Kavel, a solicitor in his former life in Mount Barker, in property law and conveyancing, and well recognised in that regard.

An issue has come to the government's attention, initially by the president of SACAT, Judy Hughes, and also Mr Greg Troughton of the Real Estate Institute of South Australia. I want to thank both of them for the work that they undertake. In essence, the government has been alerted to a matter which arose as a consequence of the recent High Court decision—

Mr KOUTSANTONIS: Point of order: is the Attorney quoting from a government document?

The SPEAKER: That is a bogus point of order.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER Order! The point of order is—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER Order! The Deputy Premier will be seated for one moment. Is the point of order that in the past Speakers have allowed some reference to public documents, but they cannot read line for line those documents only?

Mr KOUTSANTONIS: No, sir.

The SPEAKER: What was the point of order, specifically?

Mr KOUTSANTONIS: The point of order is this, sir: if a minister—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER Order! Members on my right will remain quiet.

Mr KOUTSANTONIS: —is quoting from a government document, it must be tabled. Ask your Clerk.

The SPEAKER: Is the Deputy Premier quoting from a document?

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: No, Mr Speaker. I have notes in relation to this matter and I propose to—

The SPEAKER: So that is a bogus point of order and I call the member for West Torrens to order. Deputy Premier, please continue.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: The High Court decision, for the benefit of members who are interested in this important matter, other than the member for West Torrens, is essentially that the SACAT, which was established a few years ago, is prevented from exercising its jurisdiction in residential tenancy matters, particularly those where either the tenant or landlord resides in a different state to South Australia. The government intends to bring before the house amendments, therefore, to the SACAT Act that will ensure that, where SACAT cannot exercise its jurisdiction, the Magistrates Court will be able to step in and resolve the dispute.

The High Court case, again for members who are interested in reading it from the High Court, is the case of Burns v Corbett. The New South Wales dispute involved in that case was a matter of equal opportunity legislation before the NCAT, which is the New South Wales Civil and Administrative Tribunal. The High Court held that there it had no jurisdiction to deal with the dispute in the exercise of judicial powers as distinct from administrative powers in a dispute between residents of different states. In particular, chapter 3, courts need to deal with any of those disputes and in South Australia it could be dealt with by the Magistrates Court.

On 5 June 2018, the president of SACAT herself handed down a judgement on a local matter, confirming the implementation of that decision. Accordingly, as a result, in short, we've got a problem. Regrettably, the former government, being the last jurisdiction in the country to actually introduce an administrative tribunal, had several different pieces of legislation before us. Disappointingly last year, after the abolition of the position of one of the senior members of SACAT, they then announced that there would be a chance that another 12 jurisdictions would be transferred to SACAT, with funding we were promised.

When we get into office we find, of course, that only a quarter of one person's funding is actually provided. How you have a quarter of a person to actually deal with an extra 10 or 12 jurisdictions is beyond me. In any event, these are the sorts of things we have to clean up but, in this instance, we do need to deal with it. There are 700 to 800 cases a year that this would affect, which surprised me when I first heard that.

Essentially, we have a number of people, landlords and companies, registered interstate who are the owners of property. The difficulty is that in a number of these cases we may not be able to enforce the collection of rent, or indeed the eviction of tenants or the refund of bonds, so we have a problem. We are ready to clean it up swiftly, with the support of the parliament. To ensure that this matter is amended, I will ultimately be seeking their support.