An employer who was asked “invasive” and “completely unnecessary” questions by a real estate agent about a staff member is calling for changes to Victoria’s Residential Tenancies Act.
An online employee referee questionnaire was sent to the secretary of the Victorian Trades Hall Council, Luke Hilakari, by a real estate agent in both an email and a text message.
The questionnaire included inquiries about the employee’s job position, typical tasks and responsibilities, gross annual income including superannuation and probation status.
Also on the list was the open-ended question, “would you consider renting to this person?” among others about whether Hilakari considered his employee punctual, hard working, reliable and responsible.
“These questions are deliberately and unnecessarily invasive,” Hilakari said. “In a reference check for someone getting a job you wouldn’t ask that many questions. “[They] are completely unnecessary to renting a house.”
He said he was “gobsmacked”. “[I] did not want to provide one bit of data, but I felt like I had no choice,” he said. “[The employee] was worried, and I was worried, that if I didn’t answer [they] wouldn’t get the property.
“It gives the employer way too much power over someone else’s life. If that boss has an issue with that worker, or they have just had a bad week and gave a negative review, that person isn’t getting a house.”
Hilakari posted his concerns to Twitter.
“It wasn’t very long until we had lots of people saying, this is my terrible experience,” he said.
We must change the Residential Tenancies Act.
— Luke Hilakari (@lhilakari) July 30, 2022
I was a reference for an employee & the agent asked q’s like:
- Totally salary
- Do they come to work on time
- Are they hard working
These q’s are none of the agents business & no boss should have the power to spike where u live.
Hilakari said an agent should only be able to ask an employer for verification of the employee’s place of work.
“Does that person work for you, yes or no?” he said.
The Victorian Residential Tenancies Act was reformed in March 2021 to make renting in Victoria “fairer and safer,” according to Consumer Affairs Victoria.
A provision included in the act enables regulations to be made about the information landlords and agents can require in tenancy applications.
“Victoria has gone further than other states in dealing with this sort of issue, although arguably not as far as it should,” Dr Chris Martin, a senior research fellow at the University of New South Wales, said.
Requests for information that are regulated include previous tenancy disputes, claims on bonds, bank statements showing dates of transaction, and information about personal attributes that are protected under the Equal Opportunity Act, such as marriage status or sexuality.
“Things not covered are the sort of income you receive, and if you’ve applied for social housing, that sometimes come up on application forms when they shouldn’t,” Martin said.
He said Victoria could go further by “adding to the list of things they’re not allowed to ask,” such as income, status as a social security recipient and status of application for social housing.
Martin said the “big problem is that rental markets do get as tight as they are at the moment”.
This gives agents the space to “ask for more precise and invasive information,” some of which “goes well beyond what is reasonably necessary”.
He said Hilakari had picked up on an area that is unregulated. “And that goes for other jurisdictions in Australia as well,” Martin said.
“We need the provision for regulation, then we need the regulation that says we can’t ask that.
“This is an area where all states and territories need to go even further than the Victorian approach.”
