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The National Association of Tenants’ Organisations (NATO) has opened its pre-election questionnaire, inviting all parties and independent candidates to make their position on Australia’s tenancy laws and approach to affordable housing publicly known.
NATO is the federation of all state and territory tenants’ rights organisations, which coordinates advocacy and advice regarding more than 80,000 tenancy issues each year.
The organisation has put the call out to political leaders and hopefuls in an effort to collect their policies and election promises on the issue of rental housing into a single source for voters.
The questionnaire asks political entities in the upcoming election to outline their commitments to the following:
- Greater investment in social housing
What will your party do to increase the supply of public and community housing in Australia?
- Increase in income support and rent assistance
Will your party commit to increased income support, including rent assistance, during the next term of the government? And if so, how much?
- Greater stability and security for people who rent their homes
Do you support stronger security of tenure provisions in residential tenancy law? If elected to the government, what action could your party take to encourage states and territories to improve security of tenure for renters?
- Energy-efficient, healthy homes for renters
How will your party ensure that minimum energy efficiency standards are regulated for rental properties in every state and territory?
- Reduced speculation in the housing market
What will your party commit to doing in the next term of the government to put downward pressure on property prices and ease property speculation?
- Protecting renters’ personal information
What action will your party take to ensure national privacy laws are up to date and appropriate for the modern renting sector?
- Ensure renters’ voices are heard and can receive high-quality advice and assistance
What will your party do to ensure renters’ voices are heard in the national conversation and can receive high-quality advice and assistance when facing legal needs?
In their letter to the parties, Leo Patterson Ross and Penny Carr, writing on behalf of NATO, noted: “We will not be ranking, marking or otherwise providing comment on the responses, this is an opportunity for respondents to inform the renting and general public of their policy approaches to these issues”. They also advised that all feedback would be published in full.
NATO expects to make the responses public later this week.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Juliet Helmke
Based in Sydney, Juliet Helmke has a broad range of reporting and editorial experience across the areas of business, technology, entertainment and the arts. She was formerly Senior Editor at The New York Observer.
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