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A periodic lease by definition is a lease per period (e.g. two weeks). Hence to say you cannot terminate a periodic lease at the end of the relevant period, changes its very nature and it is no longer a periodic lease. The same argument goes for a fixed term lease. The government cannot change the meaning of words that have a literal and denotative ordinary meaning and a legal meaning understood for hundreds of years. Now all leases will essentially be perpetual or forever leases except where SACATs permission is obtained in extremely limited cases. Your substantive property rights are effectively now given to SACAT, a tribunal not a Court with no strict Evidence rules or standard of proof. 

“A bond is an incentive to fulfill an obligation; it also provides reassurance that compensation is available if the duty is not fulfilled.” (Encyclopaedia Britannica) It’s supposed to be a guarantee against loss to the Landlord from damage and non payment of rent. How can it go down when everything has gone up? What if there is non payment and damage at the end of a lease? Why on earth reduce the guarantee when all the landlords costs have dramatically increased?

Pets can be cute and cuddly, but they can also cause a significant amount of damage. It is our members experience that even though the legislation says that tenants are liable for costs recovering these costs is a harrowing experience, especially with a reduced bond. How can you ensure the ‘keeping pets outside’ is really policed? You can’t and you are being mandated to wear this cost.

To illustrate how the penalties are completely insane against landlords consider that there is a $50,000 fine for a landlord breaching quiet enjoyment provisions against a tenant up from $2,500.00. 

Landlords have many increasing bills associated with the rental property to pay, on top of any increasing mortgage repayments. We need certainty aswell. Tenants can in some cases leave with only 7 days notice but landlords cant end a lease even when it is agreed to expire. Landlords have to go through SACAT, in most cases to terminate a lease. How is this fair?

Why is one group of tenants treated differently to another? If the government boasts that these laws will make tenants feel more secure, why aren’t Housing Trust tenants afforded the same rights and community housing tenants? Is it because they, like private landlords know that some tenants are exceptionally difficult to deal with? 

No phasing in of provisions. How can a landlord enter into a contract for a periodic lease or fixed term lease with a predetermined set of conditions with our current tenants, and then be forced to proceed with a new set of conditions – conditions we did not agree to at signing of the original contract? This is not fair.

Australia has a world famous system of ensuring that you are the rightful owner of a parcel of land – known as the Torrens title. It is a register of interest to a particular parcel of land. So if you purchase a parcel of land, it gets registered at the Lands Title Office. If you have a mortgage on that property, then the bank will also register its interest. If a party has obtained that registration in a non fraudulent way, then that party owns that property subject only to other registered interests and 12 month unregistered leases. If you are the sole registered owner, then you are the owner of that property. PERIOD! This legal principle which insures your right of ownership is called INDEFEASABILITY. NOBODY CAN CHALLENGE IT, if you are the sole registered owner on the registry at the Lands Title Office except for a period of 12 months for unregistered leases This will be changed to three years. This means for example that SACAT could in its almost limitless discretion theoretically prevent you from selling, moving into or renovating your home for up to three years. The practical implication of this is the potential reduction in value of your property and all South Australian properties because your hands can be tied by SACAT for up to three years. Will the government provide compensation? This massive change was misleadingly labelled in the new Residential Tenancies Act amendments as “related changes to the Real Property Act” despite its massive significance. 

There are very onerous and significant duties on a landlord to act reasonably while facing potentially perpetual leases, the possibility the landlord at their own expense needs to vet people they didn’t even lease the property to, who could be there indefinitely and extreme fines from 25 to 50 thousand dollars The capacity for tenants to weaponise and abuse these absurd laws is obvious.

These new laws remove our ability to end a lease. (Subject to contractual obligations). The ability to end a lease is transferred to SACAT – a non judicial body, not a Court. SACAT is not bound by the formal rules of evidence and acts without regard to legal technicalities and with minimal formality [ss 8, 39] according to the “equity merits and good conscience of the case” or arguably the ill informed opinion of an often pro tenant non judicial member appointed by the Government. Some are not even lawyers and now have access to absurd excessive penalties. How can landlords trust this absurd system.