HOW THE FIGHT TO GET PETS ALLOWED IN APARTMENT BUILDINGS HAS REACHED NSW PARLIAMENT

It’s being debated by the courts, tribunals and owners corporations, and now the row over whether pets should always be permitted in apartment buildings has hit the NSW Parliament.

A petition calling for the end of blanket pet bans in NSW strata schemes has now become the first online petition ever permitted to be hosted by the legislative process, and has attracted over 5,200 signatures in its first 12 days.

“We felt there’s a lot of support from the community about this issue of pets being allowed in apartments,” said one of the initiators of the petition, Dianne Nicotra, who lives in a tower block with a pet ban.

“Pet owners in NSW just don’t have the protection they have in other states, and it’s impacting so many people. We now know so many stories – a widow told by her doctor to get a companion pet, someone who can only have one child who wants a pet, a lady whose pet-friendly building changed the bylaws so she had to move out, elderly people who want companionship — it’s causing a lot of heartbreak.”

Co-founder of the petition Jo Cooper, who lives with her elderly dog in The Horizon building in Darlinghurst that doesn’t allow pets, is now about to have her case heard by the Court of Appeal after losing at the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT).

“The reaction of people wanting to sign the petition has been really overwhelming and amazing,” said Ms Cooper, who’s so far raised over $25,300 with her Go Fund Me campaign, Mental Health & Equality for Australian Pet Owners, to help her court battle.

“We did the paper petition and then started pushing the government for an online one as well, as we couldn’t believe they’d never allowed that before. While I’ll finish off my case in court, this is also an important part of making sure that pet owners are treated fairly.”

The new e-petition process requires a member of the Legislative Assembly to agree to present the petition and, if it has more than 20,000 signatures, the issue will automatically be scheduled for debate in the House.

City of Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore is now also supporting the petition and is writing to Premier Gladys Berejiklian calling for the removal of blanket bans.

Member for Newtown, Greens MP Jenny Leong, is the sponsor. “This was the first e-petition to get registered and it’s important,” she said.

“We know that more and more people, and families, are living in apartments and blanket bans on pets fail to recognise how strong people’s connections are to their pets.”

“They see them as part of their family. We’ve pushed also for changes to the Residential Tenancies Act to get rid of blanket bans in rental accommodation too, and we want to see the same rights to keep pets.”

The controversy over pet bans flared as a result of residents in both The Horizon and the Kings Cross building the Elan taking their fight to have pet bans overturned to NCAT.

They won in the first instance, but then both decisions were overturned on appeal, keeping the buildings’ bans in place.

Barrister Richard Gration, acting for the Elan and a resident in The Horizon, said the decision was “a victory for democracy”, as it upheld the rights of owners to decide whether or not to permit pets.

“What the tribunal has said is that it’s up to owners to decide for themselves what rules they want to have governing their own local community,” he said. “They’ve upheld the rights of owners to regulate their own community.”

A motion to the City of Sydney council on Monday night calling for councillors to back the petition, put forward by Councillor Christine Forster, was then seconded by Ms Moore.

Councillor Forster’s position is that if 75 per cent of a strata scheme vote against having pets in their building that’s fine, but at the moment only 25 per cent is required to uphold any bylaws that ban pets in a scheme.

She believes, therefore, that the Strata Schemes Management Act (2015) should be weighted more in favour of pet ownership.

“Our strata laws should be changed so pets should be allowed,” said Councillor Forster. A body corporate should still have the right to vote to exclude them, but the default position should be that pets are permitted.

“Around 80 per cent of the residences in the City of Sydney local government area are apartments – over five times the national average.

“Across Australia, more than 62 per cent of households own pets. For so many people it’s incredibly important to be able to keep a companion animal and it’s no impost on anyone except the owner.”

The petition states that pets play a crucial role in many people’s lives, offering vital companionship, have well-documented mental and physical health benefits, and are increasingly recognised as part of the family.

“Accordingly, every Australian state and territory now has some form of protection for pet ownership in strata – except for NSW, the most densely-populated state with the greatest proportion of people living in strata.

“The petitioners therefore request that the SSMA (2015) be amended to allow the keeping of pets in ALL Strata Schemes and invalidate retrospectively any by-law that prohibits the keeping of pets.”