2016-11-08
I rise to speak on the Owners Corporations Amendment (Short-Stay Accommodation) Bill 2016. In the view of the Greens this is a fairly weak bill. Insofar as it establishes a complaints procedure for apartment block residents who find their lives disturbed by short-stay tenants, we in the Greens say that that is okay, that it is better than nothing — but only marginally. Our main problem with this bill and the main problem many long-term residents of apartment buildings have with this bill is that it does not actually address the issues.
Since the Victorian Court of Appeal confirmed in 2013 that there is no effective regulation of short-stay accommodation arrangements in apartment blocks, long-term residents have had very little power to do anything when those arrangements get out of hand. The media and the Labor government have commonly highlighted unruly parties and loud music, but actually long-term residents have very legitimate concerns that go further than complaints about schoolies, bucks nights and loud parties. Long-term residents have bought into or signed leases in buildings which have been designed for long-term living. They were not designed as hotels. Because of the frequency with which hotels are used by short-stay residents, hotels are subject to a different set of requirements under the Building Code of Australia, and the expected quality of life in hotels is very different from that in apartment buildings.
What we have seen, especially in the CBD but also across Melbourne, is that some apartment buildings have now become basically de facto hotels, where 40 or 50 per cent of the apartments, sometimes even more, are being used exclusively for short-stay accommodation arrangements. Those apartments are owned by short-stay businesses which rent them out basically as hotel rooms. Long-term residents are finding that they face long waits for lifts, as the lifts are occupied by cleaners who ferry linen up and down every few days. Long-term residents are finding that they are subsidising those short-stay businesses through their owners corporation fees. When communal property needs to be replaced more often because it is being used more often by short-stay businesses, it is the long-term residents who foot the bill. And long-term residents are finding that they have additional security concerns with new people coming and going every week or every few days, which is not what they expected.
This bill does absolutely nothing to address any of these concerns. It sets up a complaints and dispute resolution procedure that relies heavily on the cooperation of the owners corporation, but it does not contain very many clues about what happens when an owners corporation is majority controlled by short-stay accommodation businesses and it ultimately leaves the responding to problems caused by short stayers up to individual owners, who need to be prepared to take a problem all the way to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
The issues raised by unregulated short-stay accommodation businesses operating in residential apartment buildings do not affect only residents. They must also have a detrimental effect on housing availability and affordability across Melbourne. Every apartment that is used exclusively for short-stay accommodation arrangements is an apartment that is not available for someone to live in, either as an owner or a long-term tenant. Housing affordability is one of the most significant challenges facing Victoria and Melbourne in our time, and we need to be tackling that challenge from every conceivable direction. This bill does nothing to address the housing affordability challenge; indeed it probably enhances it.
We understand that this bill came out of an independent panel process and the report of that independent panel is publicly available. The biggest problem that long-term residents have with the so-called independent panel is that they were not adequately represented on it. One lonely representative of apartment residents cannot seriously be expected to represent the hundreds, if not thousands, of residents who will be affected by this legislation, especially in a context where, as was the case here, the panel membership was significantly skewed toward business and short-stay operators. Given the extent of business representation on the panel, there should have been several representatives of resident owners to ensure that the variety of views held by residents affected by the short-stay industry could be adequately canvassed.
Because of this the Greens will be supporting Mr O'Donohue's motion for an inquiry into this bill. However, we have a small amendment to Mr O'Donohue's reasoned amendment, relating to the reporting date of the inquiry. I would appreciate it if that could be circulated now.
The purpose of pushing the date on is essentially due to the current workload of the committees. We have been advised that due to resourcing it is very difficult for some of the committees that have several or multiple inquiries going on at the same time to carry out their duties. I believe this would be the fourth inquiry for this particular committee. We believe that we need to be realistic about what is possible, and that to give each inquiry the attention it deserves the committee probably needs a bit more time. Therefore we are proposing 9 May next year as the reporting date.