Sounds like someone in some office situation going on here. Don't understand how decisions can be made without asking the people who work in the industry for their opinion

Margaret www.dmrealty.com.au

The NSW Government have been out of touch with public opinion for quite some time and they continue to make really dumb decisions. I don't want to get too much into the politics side of things but someone really wasn't thinking when they started down the path of creating the new NSW Government’s Residential Tenancies Bill.

The time and effort involved to put together such a change has already cost a lot in NSW tax payers' money.

Somewhere along the line Governments need to go to a group of industry advisors & propose changes rather tha doing it the other way around.

They could have even posted something here on apmasphere and got a collection of thoughts from within the industry. It would have cost them nothing. But instead they go out and waste so much money on a stupid idea that will end up causing them a huge political backlash.

Maybe they thought that if they side with the tenants they might win more votes, I don't know their reasoning for looking at making changes but it's either change for change sake or a vote grabbing exercise.

Greg, great post.  I am confused about one point, who announced that the REINSW forced the government to make considerable changes?  My understanding is that the following organisations were credited by the Hon. Virginia Judge in her motion that the 2010 draft residential tenancies bill be agreed in principal;

"Tenants Union, the Real Estate Institute, the Property Owners Association, the Law Society of NSW, the Legal Aid Commission, Shelter NSW, the Federation of Housing Associations, the Combined Pensioners and Superannuants Association, Housing NSW, the Property Council of Australia, EAC Multilist, the NSW Council of Social Services, individual tenant advice and advocacy services, the Consumer, Trader and Tenancy Tribunal and many others."

Thanks Emily, now I'm confused too. lol :) Maybe the Hon. Virginia Judge was mistaken. (wouldn't be the first time we've seen that happen to a member of the NSW Govt).

I know that the REINSW have been opposed to many of the changes from day one (when they were only given a couple of weeks to comment on the initial proposed changes) and have been lobbying very hard against a number of the proposed changes in the bill.

Sam Kremer, their Legal Counsel has dedicated a heap of time on it. It may be worth having a chat to him about what changes the REINSW have been able to make to the bill and whether they feel that the bill be agreed to in principal as she says???

Emily, when did she make that motion?

Thanks Greg.  The legislative assembly on the 2nd June was when the Hon. Virginia Judge made the motion, you can view a copy of her speech at the Parliament of NSW website.

I will post the speech to another part of apmasphere as it does make for very interesting reading but it is too long to just add in a comment.

http://www.apmasphere.com/apmasphere/posts/223-Residential-Tenancies-Bill-2-1-move-for-Draft-Bill-to-be-agreed

I just spoke with Sam Kremer from REINSW. He said that they would like to get the bill delayed. They don't have access to the marked up copy of the ammended bill and are currently going through all of the bill again to review all of the latest changes.

The last thing that the NSW Govt should be doing is pushing this bill through like they did with the Smoke Detector legislation which then required 3 ammendments to the act almost immediately afterwards.

Sam said that the REINSW haven't fully endorsed the bill in its current form.

This bill is such an important peice of legislation and will effect approx. 1 in 4 people within NSW. It shouldn't be pushed through by Hon. Virginia Judge & the NSW Parliament without getting it right or as close to right as they possibly can.

A summary of the Bills progress in Parliament is set out below (it has now been passed without amendment by the lower house and has today been introduced into the upper house). http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/nswbills.nsf/131a07fa4b8a041cca256e610012de17/d94dda4801c2408bca257735001b1bff?OpenDocument

There's a chance that the bill could be passed by the Upper House by 4pm today.

There were a number of speeches made by the members of the Legislative Assembly in relation to the amended Residential Tenancies Bill on 8 June 2010 and apparently Greg Aplin’s speech is an interesting read.

Here's the Parliamentary speech by Greg Aplin, the Shadow Minister for Fair Trading of NSW.

http://www.apmasphere.com/gvincent/posts/224-Shadow-Minister-for-Fair-Trading-Greg-Aplin-s-Parliamentary-Speech-about-NSW-Residential-Tenancy-Bill-2-1-#newest_comment