This Bill is evidently designed to afford facilities to tenants with grievances, to call attention to them and that they can avail of these facilities with more case than those afforded by earlier rent restriction Acts. The impression has, however, gone abroad that this is really a Bill where the odds are very much against landlords in favour of tenants, because of the facilities afforded tenants in the matter of costs that are not enjoyed by landlords. A tenant who has a grievance can bring his case before a court and if he sustains it the landlord has a right to defend the position he got in earlier legislation his costs are paid, but the landlord, as far as I understand the Bill, has to fight the appeal out of his own resources. It has been alleged that because of that unfair differentiation, since rent restriction legislation was introduced, the tendency on the part of the private landlord who owns property is to cease letting these premises and to cash in on them by putting them up for sale. It would be a pity if any legislation passed for the benefit of tenants should interfere with the beneficial work that private enterprise, in the way of building new houses, confers on the community. I hold that every house, whether it is to let or for sale, does to an extent relieve the rather acute housing problem that prevails, not alone in the cities but throughout the country. There is another provision in this Bill which I regard as a flaw, namely, that bad tenants—and there are such, just as there are bad landlords—with vexatious grievances could make the lot of their landlords an impossible one. Some means must be found on the Committee Stage of the Bill to rule out the possibility of vexatious appeals, or attempts on the part of such tenants to make the lot of landlords impossible.
I am acquainted with many landlords and tenants, and I know that they live on the very best of terms, being helpful in many ways to each other. In these instances the landlords are anxious to meet the reasonable requests of the tenants as regards improvements, but there are other tenants who are never satisfied. In such cases I am assured that the repairs which some tenants require to have done to their houses would often cost twice the amount of rent that their landlords collect. As matters stand, an investor who continues to build houses either to let or to sell is certainly a public benefactor. At the same time, we have to consider the position of a large number of people who, owing to economic conditions, will never be able to purchase their homes in the open market. That class of people must depend on the efforts of public bodies to provide them with decent houses, with all the modern amenities that they are entitled to, but these are houses that no private builder could provide and let at rents that the tenants could pay. The difference between what they are able to pay, and what public bodies must collect, so that there would be a fair return on the capital invested, must be met out of State funds. I have experience of cases in which public bodies, in their desire to provide sites for houses, have not treated the owners of those sites fairly. Members of public bodies who themselves owned land that would make suitable sites for building schemes never offered those sites, but they acted aggressively on the public bodies with a view to confiscating, more or less, from other people sites considered suitable for building. Those bodies compulsorily acquired those sites at a fourth of what they would realise in the open market. That is not fair. Where people have property considered suitable for building schemes, it should be acquired only in the ordinary way, and the owner should be given the equivalent of what it would realise in the open market had he an opportunity of putting it up for sale.
Senator Sweetman made what I considered a very good point last night in the brief remarks he addressed to the House on this Bill. He urged that the Government should encourage private enterprise in building but he stressed that the Government should exercise some supervision over the class of houses built, so that those known as "jerry builders" would not be allowed to cash-in on the necessities of people who are prepared to take any house in order to have a roof over their heads. Something should be done to stop that abuse, which is not confined to the cities. It should be possible to amend this Bill in such a way as to rule out the possibility of tenants with vexatious claims pestering landlords who are discharging their responsibilities in the best possible manner. If provision were made whereby tenants of that unreasonable type would be prevented from coming forward with frivolous claims, this Bill would be a very good one.