 Good morning everybody and thank you for joining us today for today's session about the Tribunal. The core responsibility of the RTA is to administer the tenancy laws for Queensland and provide information about tenancy laws and processes to everybody that's involved in a tenancy. So whether you're the landlord, agent, tenant or whether you're the resident. My name is Lynne Smith. I'm the Senior Committee Education Officer with the RTA. So my role involves raising awareness of the RTA's services and educating people on rights and responsibilities. Today's session will run for approximately 30 minutes. I'd also like to acknowledge clients attending today's session have a vast range of awareness of this topic and from clients who have never attended a Tribunal to ones who are very experienced. Today's session has been based around a lot of feedback of requests and what we have received over the past and we're very pleased to run today's session in collaboration with QCAT. So with us today we have a QCAT representative. So it's my great pleasure to introduce Peter Stilgoe. Peter is a senior member of the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal. A role she has held since January 2012. She was first appointed to the Tribunal as a member in 2009. She has worked as an alternative dispute resolution registrar for the Queensland Planning and Environment Court from 2007 to 2009. Prior to that she was a commercial litigation lawyer for more than 20 years. In 2013 she received an Order of Australia Medal for services to dispute resolution. So Peter will be sharing valuable information with us today and if you do submit a question to us relating to any particular case and whether that's current or past cases, unfortunately Peter will not be able to make a comment on that. So very much welcome Peter. Good morning, Lee. It's lovely to be here. So today's session we want to go through what the Residential Tenses and Room Accommodation Act talks about urgent versus non-urgent matters. We also want to do a bit of an overview of QCAT, the application, the role of the registrar and the adjudicator, what to expect on the day, so the day that you do have a hearing, the types of orders that you might have, appeals. More so too, I'm going to look for Peter to provide her top five tips for when you are going to go to QCAT and where to go for more information. So any questions that's submitted through today or we have received also a couple of email questions prior to the session starting, we will look at addressing them at the end of the session. So before we do start, I'd like to let everyone know the tribunal's contact details. In Brisbane it's level nine at the Bank of Queensland Centre at 259 Queen Street. Phone number for QCAT is 1300 753 228 and also their website, qcat.qld.gov.au. If you happen to be outside the Brisbane area, your local Magistrates Court, excluding the Brisbane Magistrates Court, you can actually go directly to your Magistrates Court. Just look underneath the courts.qld.gov.au site or in the phone book to find your nearest court. There are two main types of applications under tenancy law. One of them is non-urgent and the other one is urgent matters. So with non-urgent matters you are required to have a notice of unresolved dispute, which means that you need to come through the dispute resolution service at the RTA first. Remember there are some applications that go to the tribunal that are time sensitive. The word urgent and non-urgent does not mean the applications fast tracked. What it means, it depends on the, nor does it depend on the urgency of your urgent, what you determine might be urgent. Urgent applications come, I found, listed under section 415 of the legislation. And I'm going to turn to Peter here to actually ask, QCAT's guided by the tenancy legislation, but what are deemed to be considered urgent matters and what are non-urgent matters and maybe just an example of both? That's a good question, Lynn, and I want to start by emphasising the point that you made that urgent is determined by the act, not determined by whether the parties think it's really important or not. So section 415 is a very long section. Essentially what it does is it says that applications to finish a tenancy, whether they're brought by the landlord or the tenant, are urgent matters and matters that involve health and safety are generally urgent matters. So an example of an urgent matter is to end an agreement because of repeated breaches, excessive hardship or objectionable behaviour, emergency repairs, exclusion from caravan parks, domestic violence issues, warrants of possession, those sorts of things. Non-urgent disputes generally just talk about money. So return of the bond, compensation for repairs, compensation for the tenants, for premises that aren't up to scratch. So those are the main differences. So again, very important to make sure that if you are not listed under section 415 for that urgent application that you do follow the non-urgent process of coming through dispute resolution first. That's absolutely right because the tribunal actually has no jurisdiction for non-urgent matters unless you've been through the RTRA dispute resolution process. Great. Okay, so when we look at the overview of QCAT, people who may have been around for quite some time know it previously as being the Small Claims Tribunal. So as of 1 December 2009, the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal was formed and merged quite a few tribunals into one. I suppose I should say happy birthday to the tribunal. Thank you. It's five years. QCAT is self-representation so there's no solicitors, lawyers, barristers. These do apply with your application and are based on the monetary value of what your application or what you're seeking. So if I gave you an example, if your claim is under $500 and there is no amount claimed, currently the application fees around $23. If your claim, say, it's more than $1,000 but less than $10,000, then the application fee is $105. So where I would do is actually refer you to the QCAT's website and get the details on the fee structure. I know QCAT's quite a busy place, Peter. So how many tens of cases does QCAT receive? We receive over 10,000 cases a year, Lynn, throughout the state. Okay. So taking into account the merge of all these tribunals, what are the matters that does the QCAT adjudicator deal with besides tenancy matters? So just to give clients an understanding that it's not just tenancy matters that they deal with, there are other matters as well. About 48% of what the tribunal does overall is minor civil disputes and about half of the minor civil disputes is tenancy. But in addition to that, an adjudicator can deal with minor debt, consumer trader claims. If your new fridge isn't working well, you can go back and make a claim against the supplier. Trader trader claims, motor vehicle, what we call crash and bash, so motor vehicle property damage claims, and fences. So a very wide range of matters. So there's obviously a lot of other legislation that an adjudicator would actually need to know as well. Yes. Okay. So when it comes time to actually applying to QCAT, and I think this is probably a very important part of going to QCAT is actually getting the application right. So if it is a non-urgent matter, obviously you need to make sure that you provide your copy of the notice of unresolved dispute from the RTA. With your application form, make sure that you do sign it. I know that talking to some of the registrars at the tribunal, sometimes they get applications that people filled in, but they forgot to sign it. Make sure that you lodge a copy with the tribunal and also a copy for each respondent. Remember, when you are filling in the application form, you are the claimant and the person responding to you is the respondent. If you are lodging the person lodging, the application needs to obviously pay the application fee as well. You need to provide your supporting documents. Very important that if you are providing any digital photos or anything like that, that it is actually in printed format. Your application needs to be made to the closest tribunal to the rental property. As said, the filing fee will vary on what you are actually claiming. Make sure that you have the address details for the respondent and keep in mind that there are time restrictions. One thing QCAT does have on their website and that you can also obtain is a checklist that you can go through to make sure that if you are going to QCAT that make sure that your application is correct and that you have provided everything that you should be providing. So, Peter, I'll come back to you. So, what are your top tips for when you complete an application? So, Lynne, you've covered quite a few important points and they're in the slides. In addition to that, please make sure you've got the correct names because if you have to later enforce it, it's a very difficult thing to sometimes change the name. So, make sure they're spelled correctly. Make sure that they're described correctly. If you're a property agent or property manager and it's a compensation claim, it's not a bad idea to join the landlord because otherwise you'll be personally liable and you'll have to chase that money from the landlord. It's important to have the correct addresses and it's also important to attach all the relevant information. So, that would be, for example, the tenancy agreement, notices that you've sent, documents and emails that you've sent. If you're claiming for rent, whether you're the landlord or the tenant, a copy of the rent letter. If you're claiming compensation, copies of quotes or invoices. Any reports that you've received to support your contention that the property may not be as good as it is or that it needs some work done on it. If you can, it's also really good to have all of that information in an indexed and paginated document. And the reason for that is that if for some reason one of the parties can't turn up, we can still do the hearing by phone if everybody can turn to the same document at the same time. So, if we can say, look at page nine, tell me about that. But if the party on the end of the phone has to scramble and we're not sure that the party is talking about the same document, then we'll have to adjourn it off. Also, it's a really important point, Lynne. We can't look at electronic evidence. Don't bring your laptop, don't bring your phone because if we do refer to that evidence, we're going to have to keep your phone or your laptop for the time of the appeal period. So I've printed out if there are photos, print them out in colour so that the adjudicator can see what's happening, paginate it, submit it as one document. Great. So I should actually ask, because a couple of questions come through, and one is particularly, what should I do if I do not know the forwarding address for the respondent? And I suppose this may actually happen more so probably agents or landlords trying to find, not knowing where the tenant's forwarding address might be. Oddly enough, it happens with property managers as well where they change address and the tenant's lost track of them. The tribunal has the obligation to serve the documents but the tribunal won't go searching for an address so your application won't be dealt with after you've filed it unless the tribunal has an address to send it to. So what we suggest is that you file material which shows that a method of service is likely to come to that person's attention. So have a look in the phone book. Is there a Facebook page? Do you have an email address? What other inquiries have you made? Is there a relative that you think will pass this information on? If we're satisfied that you can provide us with some way of contacting the other side, then we're likely to accept that. But without an address or if you provide us with, if you're the landlord or the landlord's agents and you provide us with an address where we know the tenant no longer resides, then we're not going to be able to progress your application. Okay, so that's probably a very good tip that you've provided there, Peter. So I just want to go on to the role of the registrar. If I can go back to you again. So once an application is received at QCAT, what can the registrar do? And more the point, what do they know or what can they not do? So the registry will process your application and it will schedule a hearing as soon as possible. We've got some time frames. So urgence normally happened within about three weeks. And non-urgents, our benchmark is five to eight weeks. That will vary. This property agents have probably noticed that the non-urgents have been pushed out. There's various reasons for that. The primary reason is that we know that the pressure on housing is about terminations around this time of year. So we focus on that. We can explain processes and procedures that parties aren't clear on, including will that they can tell you about what happens at the hearing. But the registry can't give you legal advice, can't fill in forms for you. They can tell you what information you need to put in there but they can't tell you the correct information. So they say put your damages in here but they won't tell you what that is. We won't give you and can't give you advice about whether something's likely to be successful or not. And we can tell you about evidence but we can't tell you specifically what evidence you need to put in. Right. So if I then go over to, that's the role of your registrar. So if I want to look at now the role of the adjudicator. And I think it's important for people to understand this particular role. So Peter, again, I'll get you to explain the role, how they make decisions. And if it's okay, I might also get you to elaborate a little bit more. Are there any other acts that an adjudicator follows to make decisions? All right. So all adjudicators are legally trained and they have broad experience. And the same with the JP panels. One of the justices of the piece will be legally trained and they generally have broad experience. They make a decision based upon the evidence. So that's the material that you put before the tribunal. And the law. So the law consists of two things. Consists of the Act, the RTI Act and previous cases. We also have regard to our QCAT Act and the Acts Interpretation Act in relation to service and timeframes. So when it comes time to actually going to QCAT, obviously again we're representing, people represent their own side in their own case. You need to look at taking your file, the evidence that supports your argument. So your TNC paperwork, all the things that you mentioned before, Peter. You need to be prepared and obviously be punctual for your time of the hearing. I agree with what you're saying before too. Obviously it's great to have like a summary of any of the key TNC issues and dates. Maybe also to being organised and having like a pen, a paper, a calculator or even a calendar with you. Just so that if you are asked questions by the adjudicator that you're able to make sure that you can actually be able to answer those questions quite smartly. So going to a tribunal is a stressful situation. So I think it's important to remember that you need to be respectful to all tribunal staff, the adjudicator and the other party. Remember the outcome from the adjudicator is final and it is actually up to the adjudicator at the end of the day. So talking about the day, Peter. So I just want to just go on to the next slide, which is can you give us an idea of what to expect on the day of the hearing? Yep, so we list a number of matters for the same time. So you'll be greeted by a person who will direct you to the hearing room, sit outside and wait until your matters, somebody will come, take an appearance, that means we know you're here, wait outside until you're called in. When you come in, you sit at the bar table, the adjudicator will again confirm that the right parties are before him or her and probably swear you in. So that means that your evidence will be under oath. Then the adjudicator will ask each party to outline their case without interruption and succinctly. From there, if you have any witnesses, they'll be called. The adjudicator will often direct how this matter is proceeding. It's important that you do listen to the adjudicator carefully. Be courteous. An adjudicator won't listen to you if you're upset. Once the evidence is presented and you've presented your case, you have a last opportunity to talk to the adjudicator. The adjudicator will then either give you a decision or adjourn for a short time to consider it and then either come back and give you the decision or tell you that it's been reserved. One more question, Peter. Sorry, just on the day of the hearing, we're quite often asked, how do we actually address the adjudicator and the member? Do we serve Madam Honour? How do we actually address that? For a magistrate, it's Your Honour. So in the regions, it's Your Honour. If you're before an adjudicator or a member, they'll have a name plate, so it could be Mr. or Ms. whoever their name is. An adjudicator is a bit of a mouthful, so I'd stick with Sir, Mr. or Ms. if you're before a lady, Ma'am, is okay, but not fabulous. Probably a little bit older. Right. I just want to go through and have a talk to you about representation. So being that QCAT matters, our self-representation, if you're representing someone on the day, what should you do? I think it's probably a very important part and just making sure that you are authorized and what to actually do and what do you need to bring on that day? Most property agents will be automatically authorized through their tenancy agreement, so you probably need to have the tenancy agreement before the Tribunal so that we can see that. If the tenancy agreement's been transferred to a new agency and you're the new agent, you need to bring a letter of authority or some evidence that you're now able to act. It's not completely true that you can't have other representation, but that's a topic for another time. Right. If you want to bring a support person on the day, remember that that will only be allowed at the discretion of the Tribunal, but obviously if you have an impairment, if English is your second language, if you have some difficulty in understanding the Tribunal, it's likely that we'll allow them. Okay, great. So do I need to bring a witness on the day or what happens if I do decide as part of my case I'd like to bring a witness on the day? So witnesses are important if it's a question of credit. If it's he said or I said, then a third-party witness is really important. In some matters where property agents are representing the lessor, the landlord, there might have been a discussion between the landlord and the tenant. The landlord needs to be available to give evidence. It's not enough for the property manager to say, well, the landlord told me that he spoke to the tenant. But you can appear by telephone. You just have to be available. If the witness comes, I'm conscious we're running out of time, so I'll be quick. If the witness comes to the Tribunal, he or she will probably be asked to sit outside until we're ready to hear the evidence from that witness. Great. Okay, so I just want to move on to the types of orders. And I'm conscious of time, so if people can just bear with us, we probably might go with just a fraction over our allocated time. Particularly we want to try and address these questions that's coming through as well. Peter, I know QCAT deals with a wide variety of tense issues, so can I give you some examples of the matters and the types of orders that we actually probably would see at the Tribunal? Okay, so the slide actually gives you a pretty good overview, because the type of order depends upon the type of application. If you want to terminate a tenancy, the order will be termination and a warranted possession. In bond disputes, it will be an amount of money for a claim for compensation. It's probably going to be money again. Emergency repairs and maintenance, we can and we do order the landlord to go back in and fix something. Tenancy database listings, it'll be removal of the tenant's name from the database. We also make declarations about the validity of notices, orders, clauses in tenancy agreements, those sorts of things. So a very wide range and it really depends on what you ask the Tribunal for. Okay, so again, very important to obviously make sure that your application is very clear of what you're actually seeking. And Adjudicain May decided to postpone his or her decision on the day, so what should a client expect if that does actually happen? We have a three-month 90-day time limit, which we expect decisions to be delivered within. There are occasions where we go over the three-month time limit. I follow that up, so I have a report that's given to me every couple of weeks and I can monitor them. I'll give an extension in an appropriate case. But if after about three months you haven't received a decision, just give the Tribunal a call and I will follow it up. Great. So war on a possession is one of those orders that potentially does happen at the Tribunal. So maybe a land order or a manager seeking a termination order and the war on a possession. So can I get you explain what happens if Adjudicain makes a war on a possession order? What's the process on the day or what should the client do next? So we issue the war on possession and that comes out sometimes on the day but maybe a day later. And then that goes to the police. It's an order of the Tribunal. The police tend to have their own processes. Sometimes they send a notice to the tenant saying, listen, we've got this notice. What are you going to do about it? So it's yet another chance. Once we've issued the order, you should liaise with the relevant police station about how that's going to be executed and what the process is. Great. So when it comes to, I know that Peter, you see a lot of the, you see a lot of the appeal processes. So can I just get you to briefly explain what do you do to appeal an order? Is there sort of a process to go down? Yep. You have to file an application for leave to appeal. It's quite an expensive process. The filing fees over $500. You can't appeal a decision just because you don't like it. You actually have to have some ground. And generally speaking, it's that the Adjudicator failed to take account of some relevant evidence that the decision can't be justified by the evidence that the Adjudicator failed to apply the law properly, something like that. It's not enough and you don't get a second go. That's the other thing. It's not a ground of appeal to say, I forgot to tell the Adjudicator this at the tribunal and now I really want to tell you this or I've gone away and got more evidence. That's not acceptable. Okay. So I guess it's really important that people do actually check the criteria before lodging that appeal. So what happens if a client wants to just make a complaint about the process? I mean, this is obviously very separate to the appeal process. So what should a client do? And maybe give an example if that does actually happen too, I guess. It does happen. Bear in mind that a complaint won't constitute an appeal. If you want to appeal as well, then you must appeal. If you don't like the decision, a complaint won't change it only in appeal will. If you want to complain about a member or an adjudicator, it's a letter that goes to the president and he will deal with it. If you want to complain about a registry member or process, then that goes to the principal registrar. Same thing, just send us a letter. Okay, great. So, Pete, I'm coming back to you to summarize this. So we've gone through a lot this morning, but I just want to get your top five tips on what you do have if you have to go to the tribunal. The most important tip, Lynn, is if you document your process as well and keep a line of communication open with the other side, then generally speaking, you can avoid coming to the tribunal at all. You might also be able to avoid coming to the RTA, and I know that you're under pressure as well to get things through. If a dispute does arise, try and resolve it yourselves. Try to talk to the other party, respectfully, quietly. Try not to get upset. And then get your paperwork in order. Make sure it's right. Get your evidence ready when you arrive at the tribunal. Be punctual and organized. If you do need to go off for some reason to visit the facilities or get a coffee, tell somebody because we're just going to call it on if you're not there and you miss out, then there's a whole bunch of other processes that you have to go through. And be professional and respectful to everyone, the tribunal members, the other side, the registry staff. You'll get much better service that way. Excellent. I do want to get to these questions, so I'll just quickly go through. If you want more information, there's the QCAT website, qcat.qld.gov.au The RTA has information on our website. If you haven't visited our website recently, it's been refreshed and a lot more information on there now, particularly under our dispute resolution section. To access community legal centres for any legal advice, you can go to the Queensland Association of Independent Legal Services, also known as QUALES. If you want advice on self-representation, another website to look at is the Queensland Public Interest Law Clearing House, also known as QPILG. Alternatively, you can get legal advice from your own solicitor as well. I'd also like to just quickly mention if you're looking for any of the recent decisions made at QCAT, I think this is a great website to go to. It's the Supreme Court Library of Queensland. You can go look under case law, under the tribunal and type in keywords. Pass cases on like mould, compensation, tense determination or as you can find there, information there. But Peter, I think you were mentioning when we first met earlier this morning that there's also another site that people might actually go to as well. Can I just say in relation to the Supreme Court website, you'll see there's two tabs. You're more likely to find decisions on the QCATA tab. So this one right here where I've actually got my mouth hovering. A bit lower down. It's covered anyway. But there's another website which is called Ostley and the address is a-u-s-t-l-w-i .edu.au The great thing about this website is that you can craft the search so it's much more refined. So you can put in mould near still go and it'll bring up all of my decisions or mould near tenant because it might be a tenant's claim. So you can drill down to a set of decisions much more easily than you can on the Supreme Court website. Okay, so I'm just going to repeat that website. So it's a-u-s-t-l-w-i .edu .au That's right. Great. Okay, so great. Thank you everyone for sending through questions. We're going to go through them. I know some people have made comments on some current and past cases. But again, I'm just going to let you know Peter's not going to answer those actual questions. Remember, we're only going to be able to deal with questions that actually relate to the tribunal. So I think this is one that keeps coming up and it's where do I go after I get an order and it states that the tenant has to pay. I can't find the tenant or they don't have any money. Where do I go next? Or what's the next step? Well, enforcement is through the magistrates court. That's again the topic of a whole other webinar. We don't enforce. If you can't find the tenant, you can't enforce them unless you can find them. If the tenant's got no money, you've got options about bankruptcy. That's expensive. It's time-consuming. You probably need to get some advice about that. Okay, so there is another process. Again, the magistrates court to go down that path. So can I just get you to clarify what's the time frame for a non-urgent and an urgent matter at the moment with QCAT? Urgent matters in the South East Queensland region. We're running it about two weeks which is actually a very short time frame. We find the parties are often not ready. Non-urgents are out to about eight weeks but come the end of January that will be back into the five-week benchmark. Another question here, Peter. What if I cannot make it on the days, medical personal reasons, will you do the hearing over the phone? We can do the hearing over the phone. The more notice that we get the better, it's really difficult for people ringing up on the day of the hearing to be matched into the hearing process. So you'll often drop out of the system. If we haven't said yes you can attend by phone or if we've said we're not going to adjourn it then we expect you to be there unfortunately. So try, we can't stop medical emergencies but try to get some information to us as soon as you can. Okay. Just a question seeking for clarification around a termination order and a bond claim. Now I'm assuming this is probably going to go back to some decisions that's been made where they are dealt with as separate cases. It's unfortunately for everyone being made quite clear that if you are applying for a termination, even if it's for arrears of rent, all we can do is terminate because you then have to go through the dispute resolution process with the RTA to claim compensation. So you've got your urgent and your non-urgent matters. Question here, where do I go to get a copy of the transcript? Is there costs involved? So you go to Auscript to get a paper copy of the transcript is very expensive but you can get a CD an audio of the transcript which is much, much cheaper and if you want to sit and listen to it and type it yourself there's no impediment to that. Okay. Just one more question I think we'll probably, we are over time but I do apologize to everyone for that but I think it's important that we do have Peter here that we try and get some of these questions answered. So what if I have some confidential evidence that I don't want the other person to know where it came from but it's important to support my case. Will the adjudicator protect the identity? We've got power to make a non-publication order. It's under section 66. We won't make the non-publication order unless you can demonstrate the things that section 66 sets out and really you have to demonstrate that it's going to endanger the physical or mental health or safety of the person or offend public decency or it would be contrary to the public interest. So it's quite a difficult test and you do need to put some submissions around that. Okay. So another question here, so when an order is made for a dismissal or it's withdrawn does QCAP provide on the order the reason why the QCAP or the adjudicator has dismissed or all the matters being withdrawn? Not necessarily. We might say it's dismissed for non-compliance if there's a procedural matter but otherwise generally not. Okay. We're going conscious of the time so look there are more questions that have come through. If we do get a chance to try and address some of them individually with you afterwards we will do so but again if you need some urgent information about a QCAP process please phone QCAP or go to QCAP's website. Anything from the RTA? If you need urgent information about RTA, about tenancy processes please again contact the RTA on the 1300 number or again find some information there on our website. I think it's great Peter that you've been able to answer a lot of those questions and again we've got so many more that we just couldn't attend to because we were fully booked out in today's session so I just want to let everyone know that we do have some more information sessions coming up across Queensland. We'll have some more webinars coming up as well and just keep in mind the RTA does have a YouTube site so all our past webinars are actually available on RTA Queensland under the YouTube and also on our website. I'd just like to first of all a huge thank you to Peter for coming in and giving her knowledge and her assistance today in doing this topic because this is actually one of the topics that we get asked all the time to have a talk about. I think if I looked at there's three main points to really ensure that if you are going to the tribunal have your paperwork right, be evidence ready and also need to have respect on the day that's involved on the other party or the adjudicating staff. A short survey is going to pop up now on your screen in a minute so if you could please take the time to complete this. Let us know any feedback any topics that you would like to see in the future so that we can actually put those on for you. Again thank you for your time and a big thank you to Peter for her time today so please take those few minutes to complete this survey.