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Simon Parker
The real estate industry is unlikely to see draft legislation for national licensing until late March at the earliest, Real Estate Institute of Australia (REIA) CEO Amanda Lynch has said.
“The government has indicated the Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) will [now] come out at the end of the first quarter,” Ms Lynch told Real Estate Business.
“It might be even be early April.”
The draft rules, or regulation impact statement (RIS), were originally due for release in July last year. This was later pushed back to October.
Once released, the industry has six weeks to comment on the proposed legislation, with the implementation date currently set as July this year.
A member of the Council of Australian Governments’ (COAG) National Licensing Taskforce – the body responsible for delivering the RIS - told Real Estate Business in November the delay would not alter the implementation date.
“National licensing will still commence from July 2012,” the spokesperson said.
Yet Ms Lynch said the latest delay in releasing the RIS meant the legislation’s implementation date was now in doubt.
“The government hasn’t made a public announcement about whether [the RIS] will be delayed, or whether the deadline will be met, however it’s hard to see how it will be met,” she said.
Ms Lynch said the government also hadn’t indicated what might be in the RIS.
She said the REIA continued to push the government to maintain minimum entry requirements for the industry. This included a Diploma-level of education for licensed real estate agents, “adequate” training for sales representatives, and the requirement for Continuing Professional Development (CPD).
The REIA also wanted to see commercial real estate agents included in the national licensing regime.
Real Estate Business attempted to contact COAG in relation to this article but was yet to hear back from them at the time of writing.
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