The shoe may soon be on the other foot between landlords and renters in Canberra. A motion is being introduced in the ACT Legislative Assembly this week giving renters the power to request a reference from their landlord, not just the other way round.

Fronting the proposal is ACT Labor MLA, Michael Pettersson, who said the current housing landscape means many in the community will be renters for the rest of their lives.

Rental laws have long been debated in the ACT, and Mr Pettersson said the current government has been implementing reforms to try and address the imbalance.

Landlords are entitled to extensive background information about tenants, while tenants gain little to no information about their landlords, said Mr Pettersson.

The proposal would give prospective tenants the right to receive a reference from a landlord’s previous tenants, he said, giving landlords a greater incentive to treat renters with more dignity and respect.

“I’m a renter myself and I would like the ability to provide information to future tenants about my experience with the landlord. I saw the idea suggested by comedian Tom Cashman on TikTok and I could immediately see the benefits for Canberra renters,” he said.

“Landlords know everything about a tenant; they know their income, employment, rental history and personal references. Tenants don’t know anything about their landlord and, importantly, they don’t know anything about their treatment of previous tenants. It’s unfair.

“The motion also calls for the ACT Government to reaffirm its ongoing commitments to protecting the rights of renters in the Territory. This is a simple change that will help address the power imbalance that exists between landlords and tenants.”

Real Estate Institute of the ACT (REIACT) CEO, Michelle Tynan, said that while the real estate industry isn’t against the motion, it would have to be conducted under the same tenancy database that evaluates tenants.

“We have to adjudicate whether the person is a bad landlord, but it needs to be the same process for tenants and listened in a tenancy database. There’s no other way to be fair,” Ms Tynan said.

“The motion has to have far more detail on how it’s going to work if it’s going to be looked at seriously – there’s privacy issues from both sides.

“The statement that landlords see everything about a tenant is incorrect, the information is collected from the real estate. To say that a landlord has all the information is misleading.”

Ms Tynan said 85 per cent of properties are managed by an agency or property provider, so for those that are self-managed, she doesn’t know how you’d protect them with this motion.

“There is merit in this motion – bad landlords need to be called out – but I can’t stress enough that it has to be done in the same way; through the ACAT process, complaints lodged and heard, a decision handed down, and then added to a database,” she said.

“It’s a very slippery slope without that.”

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