Australia: Commercial Leasing COVID-19: Australian State Legislation Comparison – New South Wales and Victoria & Queensland

Includes all entities which are considered 'related body corporates' as defined by the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) and turnover is assessed on the group level.

Only a general process outlined.

NSW General Process

There is a general obligation that the landlords must, if requested by the Eligible Tenant, renegotiate in good faith the terms of the commercial lease having regard to the leasing principles under the Code.

Implements a prescribed process.

Victorian Prescribed Process

1. The tenant must make a written request for rental relief to the landlord accompanied with:
   
   (i) a statement by the tenant that the lease is an eligible lease and not excluded from the operation of the Victorian Regulation; and
   
   (ii) evidence that demonstrates the tenant is an Eligible Tenant (see criteria above).
   
   
2. Within 14 days after receiving the request (or an agreed longer period), the landlord must offer rental relief which has regard to all circumstances of the relevant lease.
   
   
3. The landlord's offer must include:
   
   (i) rental relief of up to 100% of the rent payable and may consist of waivers, reductions, remissions or deferrals of rent (or a combination thereof);
   
   (ii) no less than 50% of the rental relief offered by the landlord must be in the form of a waiver (unless otherwise agreed by the landlord and the tenant);
   
   (iii) apply for the duration of the Victorian Period (this will have practical implications – discussed in the next section).
   
   
4. The parties must then negotiate in good faith with a view of agreeing on the rental relief to apply during the Victorian Period.

Queensland Prescribed Process

1. Either party to an affected lease may make a written request to the other party to negotiate the conditions of the lease, including the rent payable.

    

2. Once the request has been made, the parties must, as soon as practicable, exchange information that is:

   In the notes, the Queensland Regulations includes a list of examples of "sufficient information". These include

   (i) true, accurate, correct and not misleading; and
   
   (ii)sufficient information to enable the parties to negotiate in a fair and transparent way.

a statement setting out the terms sought to be negotiated;

supporting information and evidence of their turnover reduction; and

any steps the Eligible Lessee has taken to mitigate their losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

     3.  Within 30 days after providing sufficient information, the landlord must offer the Eligible Tenant a rent reduction along with any other proposed changes to the lease terms (set out below).

Determination of relief amount
Under the NSW Regulations, parties are required to renegotiate the rent payable under the commercial lease having regard to:

(i) the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic; and

(ii) the leasing principles set out in the Code.

The notes to that section reference specific leasing principles including the proportionate reduction of rent based on the reduction in the Eligible Tenant's turnover due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Further information on calculating the proportionate reduction under the Code is available here.

Duration of the relief
The NSW Regulations do not prescribe a specific end date for negotiated rental relief agreements. The only guidance comes from the Code, which states that landlords are to offer the rental reduction for "the [duration] of the COVID-19 pandemic period and a subsequent reasonable recovery period".

We wrote about the difficulties of this in practical negotiations in a separate article available here.

Determination of relief amount
Under the Victorian Regulations, landlords are not limited to only the proportionate reduction of the Eligible Tenant's turnover as the basis for assessing rental relief.

Instead landlords are to consider a wide range of factors in determining the relief amount, including:

• the reduction in the Eligible Tenant's turnover during the Victorian Period;
• any waivers of outgoings or expenses;
• the Eligible Tenant's current financial position; and
• the landlord's financial ability to offer rental relief.

The last factor is an important distinction as (unlike in NSW) it allows consideration of the landlord's financial position in the overall rental relief being offered.

Duration of the relief
As referenced above, the Victorian Regulations specify that any rental relief is to apply for the Victorian Period (i.e. an end date of 29 September 2020).

Contrasted with the open-ended wording of the NSW Regulations, rental reliefs negotiated under the Victorian Regulation will likely be significantly shorter in duration compared to their counterparts in NSW.

Under the Queensland Regulations, the landlord's offer must include:

• -no less than 50% of the rent reduction offered to be in the form of a rent waiver; and
• have regard to (amongst other things):
  • all the circumstances of the Eligible Tenant's business (including reduction in turnover during the Queensland Period);
  • the extent to which failure to reduce the rent would compromise the Eligible Tenant's ability to comply with their obligations under the lease;
  • the landlord's financial position, including any financial relief it has received; and
  • any reductions in the portion of rent payable for land taxes and/or statutory charges (where those have been reduced).

Broadly, both the NSW and Victorian Regulations impose wide-ranging prohibitions on landlord enforcement actions for tenant breaches during each State's respective Periods. These tenant protections include against terminations, evictions, re-entering, recovering damages and/or charging interest, fees or charges on the unpaid rent.

Automatic protection
Under the NSW Regulations, all Eligible Tenants are automatically entitled to the protections under the NSW Regulations – irrespective of whether they attempted to renegotiate with the landlord.

Prescribed process for protection
In contrast, the Victorian Regulations impose more stringent requirements. Tenants will only be entitled to the protections against landlord enforcement actions if, and only if, they have complied with the Victorian Prescribed Process (see above).

This is an important distinction as it means that unless the tenant has submitted a formal request to the landlords they do not receive the protections under the Victorian Regulations.

As referenced above, the Queensland Regulations specify that any rental relief is to apply for the Queensland Period (i.e. an end date of 30 September 2020).

Contrasted with the open-ended wording of the NSW Regulations, rental reliefs negotiated under the Queensland Regulation will likely be significantly shorter in duration compared to their counterparts in NSW.

Automatic protection
Under the Queensland Regulations, all Eligible Tenants are automatically entitled to protections under the Queensland Regulations.

However, unlike the NSW Regulations, the protections do not apply if the tenant has substantially failed to comply with the tenant's rent negotiation obligations, despite genuine attempts by the landlord to negotiate the rent payable.

The NSW Regulations do not define the 'turnover' of other than that it includes any turnover derived from internet sales of goods and services.

Notably, unlike the Victorian Regulations, it is unclear whether government subsidies received by the SME Tenant such as payments from the JobKeeper program should be included in their calculation of annual turnover.

The Victorian Regulation includes an expansive and prescriptive definition of what is included in the calculations of the SME Tenant's 'annual turnover' which includes:

• the proceeds of sales of goods and/or services;
• commission income;
• repair and service income;
• rent, leasing and hiring income;
• interest, royalties and dividends;
• other operating income; and
• (notably) government bounties and subsidies.