When David*, his partner and young daughter moved to a regional Victorian property close to two-and-a-half years ago, they just wanted a tree-change. What they got was a nightmare rental experience, a hole in their bank account worth more than $20,000 and a prolonged dispute that is still without resolution.
David, who asked that his surname not be used, is just one of nearly 13,000 people waiting for his bond and compensation application to come before the Victorian civil and administrative tribunal (Vcat), where backlogs still persist and the median wait time is more than nine months.
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David said his landlord, who lived on the adjacent property to their country rental, was “very amicable” at first, but things quickly deteriorated.
Problems with the property became apparent within the first two weeks of David and his family moving in. They included a lack of fresh, drinkable water plumbed to the house (sinks were fed “chocolate brown” channel water at extremely low pressure), no functional hot water system, open sewage tanks that leaked near the house and major electrical hazards.
The family also learned, after receiving an electricity bill for more than $3,000, that their property was not separately metered and that they were being charged for all the electricity being used on the landlord’s farm as well as their own personal use.
After multiple requests to the landlord to perform urgent repairs, David made an application to Vcat, seeking compliance orders. It was his first of many interactions with the tribunal.
“It’s just been unbelievable,” David said. “Each time we went to Vcat, they gave [the landlord] a whole list of things to do, and he just said ‘I don’t have to do that’.”
The landlord simultaneously sought orders, unsuccessfully, to evict the family on multiple occasions.
In one of those applications, the landlord claimed the tenants refused to clear a machinery shed the landlord needed to use for his farming business, that they had refused to let the agent and landlord inspect the property, that the tenant had been “hostile and aggressive”.
The dispute reached a crisis point over the water. With no fresh water plumbed to the house (“we had a garden hose sticking in the kitchen window”, David said) and no rainwater runoff feeding the tank, the family had to pay for water to be trucked in and the tank filled.
Then, David claims, the landlord dumped a truckload of pallets full of fruit in the driveway and refused to move them, blocking water delivery to the tank. The pallets stayed there for months, full of rotting fruit, attracting pests and flies.
The landlord denies the claims made by David and his family. They did not otherwise provide a formal response to Guardian Australia.
David and his family finally left the property towards the end of last year. But once they vacated, their situation was no longer considered urgent by Vcat, and they were bumped to the back of a very long list.
In June last year, when still at the property, David was seeking compensation orders of $16,858.44. He estimated that today the family is out of pocket more than $23,000. He said he had debt collectors chasing him over the big electricity bills in his name as recently as last month.
Vcat said that as of March 2023, they had 10,700 bond and compensation applications and 2,200 compensation applications waiting to be heard. Compliance applications were heard within two to four weeks, while the median wait for compensation was 44 weeks.
Renters ‘too scared’ to go to tribunal
Tenants Victoria helped David quantify his compensation claim. Amy Frew, director of client services at Tenants Victoria, said there was often a long wait for compensation claims and she had seen them stretch beyond the current 44-week median.
“Renters are really under a lot of pressure at the moment,” Frew said. “So delays for compensation mean that renters don’t have access to money they might be able to spend on their new bond or on other essential items.”
Frew said Tenants Victoria was also seeing delays in non-urgent repairs being dealt with by the tribunal.
A spokesperson for Vcat said issues involving safety, homelessness or urgent repairs were being heard in “accordance with pre-Covid timeframes”, with “the majority of delays relating to bond and compensation claims”.
“We recognise the financial impact and the stress of waiting to have these cases heard,” the spokesperson said. “Vcat is taking measures to reduce waiting times currently affecting some cases.”
Those measures include deploying additional members to the residential tenancies list, reintroducing in-person hearings and partnering with the Dispute Settlement Centre of Victoria to improve access to mediation.
The Victorian Greens’ renters’ rights spokesperson, Gabrielle de Vietri, said the balance of power in dispute resolution overwhelmingly favoured landlords over tenants.
“Taking a matter to Vcat can be costly and time-consuming, two huge barriers when you’re a renter facing the rising cost of living and skyrocketing rents.
“Many renters are too scared to take their landlord to Vcat, or are simply unable to spend months fighting an uphill battle. It’s clear the current dispute system is failing renters and doing little to prevent landlords and agents from breaking the rules.”
The Greens have pushed for a parliamentary inquiry into the rental crisis, including the adequacy of Vcat in adjudicating disputes.
A Victorian Labor spokesperson said the government gave $21m to Vcat in the last state budget to increase its capacity, and reprioritised staff from the Dispute Settlement Centre of Victoria ( to assist with Vcat’s pending caseload in the residential tenancies list.
• This article was amended on 19 July 2023 as a previous version incorrectly quoted the Vcat spokesperson with regard to timeframes for hearing cases.
