MOTION - Short Stay Accomodation
[2.42 p.m.]
Ms BURNET (Clark) - Honourable Speaker, a vote will be required. I move -
That the House -
(1) Notes that:
(a) in 2018, the State Government issued Planning Directive 6, significantly curtailing local government's ability to regulate short-stay accommodation;
(b) the Tasmanian Planning Commission's assessment of the draft Directive flagged data availability shortcomings and recommended the Government monitor and review its impact on the housing market to inform future modifications; and
(c) in 2019, the Government introduced the Short Stay Accommodation Act 2019, stating it would improve understanding of short-stay accommodation's impact on the housing market.
(2) Acknowledges:
(a) the Government has failed to review the impact of short-stay accommodation on the housing market;
(b) the Act fails to provide effective data to monitor this impact at the local government level;
(c) whole-home short-stay accommodation properties requiring a permit have grown significantly, from 1,950 in June 2019 to 3,671 in June 2026; and
(d) this growth is affecting housing affordability and amenity in local government areas across the state.
(3) Recognises Tasmania is in a housing crisis, with rental vacancies consistently below 1 per cent and rents surging beyond many residents' means.
(4) Calls on the State Government to urgently review the Short Stay Accommodation Act 2019 and the impact of short-stay accommodation on the housing market, invite public submissions, and table a final report with reform recommendations within six months.
We're in the midst of a housing crisis. In Tasmania the social housing waitlist now sits at an extraordinary 5655 people, a number growing each month. With more people sleeping on the streets because they can't find or afford a house, when the number of people accessing housing and homeless services is surging, when the cost of living crisis is putting pressure on so many families, we owe it to Tasmanians to be looking for ways to improve housing availability and to reduce the cost of housing.
Take my friend's for example. A young couple pushed out of rental after rental, watching their neighbourhood being swamped by more and more shortterm accommodation. At the same time not able to break into the housing market themselves. Despondent, eventually pulling up stumps and leaving Tasmania. Who deserves this? There are many ways the government could improve housing availability. This motion focuses on a critical component - the impact of short stay accommodation.
Research published in May by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) titled Shortterm rental accommodation models, impacts and policy responses identified that:
Internationally, rising concern about the impacts of STRA [short-term rental accommodation] -
On house prices and rental costs -
… (particularly in Europe and North America) has translated to strong restrictions …
By contrast, the Australian states and territories have been relatively slow to respond … Local governments lack reliable data to monitor and enforce compliance with existing regulations.
It found, unsurprisingly, that higher concentrations of shortterm accommodation contribute to higher rental costs and house prices. Those in social housing and the community sector have been crying out for years for this government to take action to address this crisis. Shelter Tasmania wrote in their submission on the Short Stay Levy Bill:
When rental homes are diverted to short-stay, even slight changes in the number of available properties for rent can mean critical changes in the vacancy rate. This pushes rental prices up and increases competition for the remaining long-term rentals.
When we have such a shortage of rental properties, particularly in Hobart but increasingly in other parts of the state, every home we lose from our long-term rental stock creates a greater risk of homelessness for those who can't afford, or secure, one of the diminishing number of rental properties. According to the TasCOSS State of Housing Dashboard, between 2019, when this Short Stay Accommodation Act was introduced, and 2026, we have lost 1722 whole homes to short-stay accommodation. Most of it has occurred in Hobart, Launceston, GlamorganSpring Bay and Break O'Day, which have each lost around 500 homes during that period to short-stay accommodation. For Hobart it's around 725. Meanwhile, our long-term rental vacancy rate is consistently below 1 per cent.
We can all see it more and more people sleeping on our streets, in doorways and in tents. Councils across Tasmania are concerned. According to the Local Government Association of Tasmania, who surveyed their member councils, of the 19 responses they received, seven reported they were experiencing housing or amenity impacts from shortstay accommodation. These included Flinders, Kingborough, Waratah-Wynyard, Break O'Day, Clarence and Huon Valley. Reported impacts included the loss of established homes from the long-term rental market in Waratah-Wynyard, workforce housing pressure on Flinders Island, reduced availability of long-term rentals and neighbourhood amenity impacts in Break O'Day, significant use of secondary residences for visitor accommodation that could otherwise provide for residential housing needs in the Huon Valley, and potential amenity impacts, including within strata developments in Kingborough.
I now want to focus on two parts of the short-stay accommodation conundrum. Firstly, whether councils have the power to adequately regulate short-stay accommodation to serve the needs of their local community. Secondly, whether they have the data available to them to understand the impact of short-stay on their communities to justify the decisions they might make. In relation to the power of councils to regulate, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) research published this year found that the Planning Directive 6 issued by the state government overrides local council interim planning schemes. Its wording makes it very difficult for local councils to reject planning applications for permits for shortterm accommodation which we have seen play out in Hobart time and time again. They have described the process that councils need to embark on to regulate short-term accommodation as 'slow, resourceintensive and inflexible'.
It is worth noting when this planning directive was first prepared in 2017, the then-planning minister directed the commission to assess the directive. The TPC finalised its report in May 2018, and at 12 of the report, they noted concern raised regarding what impact the draft planning directive may have on the affordability and availability of housing. They recommended that the impacts of the housing market, as a result of the draft planning directive, be monitored and reviewed, with subsequent and informed modifications to the planning directive being proposed, if that is required.
It is clear the government has not proactively monitored the impacts of the shortstay industry on the affordability and availability of housing, leaving it to the council and the community services sector to do. That's why this motion deals with the second part of the conundrum the data. If councils don't have the data to understand the scale of the problem, the actions they take are open to criticism and challenge. A key action of the 2018 housing summit was the establishment of data sharing partnerships between government and website booking platform providers who host shortstay accommodation, to determine exact numbers of entire properties being converted to shortstay accommodation, particularly in areas currently experiencing housing pressures. That is why the government introduced the ShortStay Accommodation Act the following year.
During the second reading speech, the minister promised that act would:
Lead to a better understanding of the impact of shortstay accommodation on the broader housing market, particularly the extent of conversion of entire houses in residential areas to shortstay accommodation. [tbc]
The minister specifically recognised the importance of local government in that equation. He also acknowledged, in introducing the bill, that studies suggest that shortstay accommodation has an impact on housing affordability and availability in Tasmania. Sadly, that impact has only become more profound since this act was introduced.
In my discussions with both the Planning minister and the Deputy Premier, who is in charge of the agency responsible for collecting the shortstay data, it is clear to me that the government's left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. Housing and Planning minister, Mr Vincent, seems to be labouring under the misapprehension that shortstay accommodation is not an issue for councils except for Hobart. His answers at Estimates this year certainly gave that impression. The Deputy Premier has little interest, it seems, in how the data CBOS is capturing is being used, and whether it is, in fact, assisting local government to make the decisions they need to make about the shortstay accommodation permits. In other words, neither has the data and neither is interested in monitoring it.
To prove my point, in Estimates I asked the Deputy Premier:
I'm just wondering if you could provide any data or analysis on how many shortterm rental properties were previously used as longterm private rental dwellings in Tasmania, what limitations exist in tracking this information and how they might be addressed. [tbc]
The Deputy Premier deferred to the department and minister Pearce stated:
With the ShortStay Accommodation Act, what we do is we gather information about properties that have been listed on the five main shortstay accommodation sites. We don't have any data-matching with properties that may have been listed as rentals previously, so there's no ability to be able to track and see. And in any case, that analysis probably wouldn't sit with CBOS as a responsibility, because that's really going down to a housing planning and analysis pathway. [TBC]
In Question Time yesterday, I asked the Planning minister what data the government was collecting to monitor the impact of shortstay on housing in Tasmania and if they had reviewed this data. The minister took it on notice and I still don't have an answer, which I think is quite telling.
When he introduced the Short Stay Act, Mr Jaensch recognised that implementation will require coordination between booking platform providers and state and local government. The sad reality is that this has not occurred. The silos have persisted, and councils still lack the data to understand the impact shortstay is having on their areas. AHURI note that in Tasmania, minimal analysis of the data provided by the platforms has been undertaken by government authorities. This, in turn, forced organisations such as Shelter Tasmania to commission their own research.
When the act was created, curiously, it was decided to put the data reporting obligation on the booking platforms. This data is not linked to the property-level registration permitting system that has been set up through Planning Directive 6, making it very difficult for councils to marry the two up to use it effectively. We see in other jurisdictions there is a much more robust way of gathering the data and being able to use that, particularly in New South Wales and Western Australia.
By the government's own admission, the shortstay data it collects from the booking platforms is incomplete and unreliable. In a quarterly report for the third quarter in 2024, the Director of Building noted that over 2100 addresses could not be matched to valid Tasmanian addresses and more than 5200 properties were listed multiple times. It's worth noting that the current legislation requires owners and booking platforms to provide accurate information, but despite the extremely high amount of inaccurate information it receives, CBOS has not issued one infringement notice to a booking platform provider.
In his report titled Monitoring the Impact of Short-Term Rentals on Tasmanian Housing Markets: 5th Update Since the Baseline Report for Shelter Tasmania, Prof Peter Phibbs writes:
Monitoring the number of STRs [short-term rentals] at points in time is important ... However, it is also important to understand the interactions between STRs and the longterm private rental market and whether the overall private rental market is growing or shrinking.
Designing a data matching system that records whether STRs were previously rented in the long-term rental market would be reasonably straightforward, given the data is held inside the one government agency and properties could be matched by address. In addition, it is important that MyBond system starts reporting total bond lodgments by LGA and/or region so that the size of the long-term rental market -
In the specific local government areas -
… can be monitored.
Knowing the number of shortterm accommodation listings in a particular local government area is only half of the equation to understand the impact it is having on the longterm rental market and Shelter Tasmania in their 2025-26 Budget submission also looks at some of those main recommendations of better information for councils and for MyBond to report monthly on total bond lodgement by local government area and/or region so the size of the longterm rental market can be monitored.
The Local Government Association of Tasmania wrote in response to the Short Stay Levy Bill 2025 that:
Councils report that the current datasharing and enforcement framework under the Short Stay Accommodation Act 2019 is not functioning effectively. Significant gaps in the data and limited State enforcement result in an incomplete and unreliable dataset for assessing the impact of short stay accommodation on housing supply.
There is clearly a problem here. It needs urgent attention and it is part of the solution to the housing crisis. According to community services and councils - those at the coalface - a review of the act is urgently needed. There is a simple solution to the housing dilemma this government has been unwilling to address. It's not as expensive as building more houses over a number of years. It is much more of an immediate response, that is, to address the issue of short-term accommodation in our cities and towns and across Tasmania so more Tasmanians are not forced out of rentals into unsuitable accommodation or worse still, onto the streets. Having the data and being willing to act is what this House should call for, so that people like my friends who left Tasmania could stay with the security of housing they deserve.
I commend this motion to the House.
****
[3.35 p.m.]
Ms BURNET (Clark) - I thank those who contributed to this important motion. I'd like to thank Mr Winter for Labor's support, as well as the honourable Deputy Leader of the Greens and his contribution. I'll start with the Treasurer's contribution. He stated that Tasmanians have the right to derive income from housing, but I think one of the overarching rights that people have - and Mr Bayley touched on this - is that people have the right to have a roof over their heads, and we're seeing people being denied that right with those incredibly distressing housing wait list numbers and people leaving Tasmania in droves.
Either the government didn't read or understand my motion or listen to my submissions. Just to clarify for the benefit of the government, I'm not asking for the short-stay accommodation industry to be shut down. The government has also said it reviews the data and yet there's no evidence that the data is being reviewed. That was quite clear, I would have thought, in my contribution. It's evident in the response of the Deputy Premier to my question in Estimates that the government has not undertaken an assessment of the number of whole homes being lost to the long-term rental market by short stay, even though they've acknowledged as much when introducing the Short-Stay Accommodation Act.
Honourable Speaker, I seek leave to table this briefing note from LGAT which I've distributed.
Leave granted; paper tabled.
Ms BURNET - I might add that it was in the back of this letter that was sent by various representative bodies - the Tenants Union, TasCOSS, Shelter Tas, YNOT and TUSA - and I thank them for their contribution on this debate and their ongoing advocacy. In this document they've provided there is a very good infographic on the number of whole home short-stay accommodation in June 2026 by local government area and the increase since June 2021 in percentages across Tasmania, so you can see that this is a problem right across the state.
Mr Winter talked about the planning system being the main problem and I reckon that's right. There are problems but the short-stay problem is contributing to the issues of housing availability and affordability. The issue around the Tasmanian Planning Commission looking at the short-stay case, really a test case from the City of Hobart as to whether it can regulate in low-density residential areas, but I might add that Hobart City Council spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to get to that point, but it's well beyond the financial reach and other resources of other councils, so it's an impossible situation for many councils.
In summary, I'd like to thank everybody who has contributed, Mr Vermey included, and I recognise that some of these concerns are about not being able to act in good time, but there is no action by the government on this, so I do commend this motion to the House.
The SPEAKER (Mrs Petrusma) - The question is that the motion be agreed to.
The House divided -
AYES 19
NOES 13
Ms Badger
Mr Abetz
Mr Bayley
Mrs Archer
Dr Broad
Mr Barnett
Ms Brown
Mr Di Falco
Ms Burnet
Mr Ellis
Ms Butler
Mr Ferguson
Ms Dow
Mr Jaensch
Ms Finlay
Ms Ogilvie
Mr Garland
Mr Pearce
Mr George
Mr Rockliff
Mrs Greene
Mr Shelton
Ms Haddad
Mr Vermey
Ms Johnston
Ms Howlett (Teller)
Prof Razay
Ms Rosol
Mr Willie
Mr Winter
Dr Woodruff
Mr O'Byrne (Teller)
PAIRS
Mr Mitchell
Mr Fairs
Motion agreed to.