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Brendan Wong
An overwhelming majority of agents have reacted positively to last Friday’s announcement that the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) would disband the National Occupational Licensing Authority (NOLA) from early 2014.
After Real Estate Business broke the news last Friday afternoon, many readers took to the comments to express their approval of the decision.
Philip Le Plastrier said the decision showed logic and that reflection upon the reason it was always going to fail was needed.
“Our profession has each state and territory with different acts and regulations for the sale and transfer of property, and differing planning rules,” he said.
“Before nationalising licensing in Australia, these acts, regulations and rules need to come into line under federal legislation.
“NOLA has now learnt from its folly into the regulation of professions and is in a good position to know what is required to nationalise licensing.
“COAG and NOLA must now see that mutual recognition of licensing between states needs to be overhauled. It is a barbaric situation to have four-day courses conducted in Victoria to obtain NSW licences and then be able to convert these to Victorian licences; this brings our industry into ill repute and must be stamped out.”
Richard Gomez wrote that common sense had prevailed.
“NOLA had their own agenda, which has now fallen in a heap and should be left there to rot. They wasted millions of our dollars and what did they achieve? Nothing, except uncertainty and turmoil within the industry,” he said.
Piet Potgieter said the industry needed to guard against people in positions that hampered working together across borders.
“It’s time to consider the abolishment of all state real estate institutions and form one body on a federal level to work for all real estate agencies,” he said.
Managing director of Harris Real Estate Phil Harris told Real Estate Business he was optimistic about what the disbanding would mean for the industry.
“There are much better relationships now being formed between industry and government,” he said.
“However, there still is quite a long way to go around national licensing, and with legislative changes as well.”
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