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A tenant says their tenancy-database listing is wrong. What does the agency have to do?
State residential-tenancies law is the binding constraint here, not the Privacy Act. In every state and territory a wrong listing must be notified to the database operator within 7 days of becoming aware, and the operator must generally act within about 14 days. The duty runs from awareness, not from a request. In Victoria it sits on the rental provider rather than the agent, so a Victorian property manager has to tell the owner as well. Seven days is far shorter than the roughly 30-day benchmark that applies to a correction request under APP 13, so work to the state clock.
General information, not legal advice. Tenancy-database rules are state and territory law and they differ. Your obligations depend on your circumstances and your jurisdiction.
Note that the tenancy-law duties on this page bind you whether or not the Privacy Act does, and a tenancy-database operator is bound by the APPs for its database activities regardless of its turnover.
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What is the deadline to fix a wrong listing?
The practical point for a property manager is that the Privacy Act benchmark is the slow one. If you treat a disputed listing as an ordinary correction request and work to 30 days, you will already be outside your state's tenancy-law deadline. Note also that the state duty runs from when you become aware, not from when someone asks you: 7 days in all eight jurisdictions. Two states let the listing agent correct the listing directly rather than only notifying the operator: New South Wales (s 214(3)) and Queensland (s 459A(3)). Everywhere else, written notice to the operator is the only route to compliance, so do not assume you can simply fix it at your end.
Is this actually penalty-backed?
In most places, yes, and an earlier version of this page understated it. Do not assume tenancy-database duties are merely tribunal matters.
Western Australia is penalty-backed. Residential Tenancies Act 1987 (WA) s 82G(2), the 7-day duty to notify the operator, carries a $5,000 fine, as do ss 82E(1), 82F(1), 82G(3) and 82H(2). Section 82J is the disputes and forum provision, available in addition to those offences, not instead of them.
New South Wales is mixed. Residential Tenancies Act 2010 (NSW) s 214 carries no penalty and is enforced by NCAT under s 217. But ss 213, 213A, 215 and 216 each carry 20 penalty units, so the surrounding listing obligations are penalty-backed even where the correction duty itself is not.
Victoria is the harshest. Residential Tenancies Act 1997 (Vic) ss 439G and 439H carry 150 penalty units for an individual and 750 penalty units for a body corporate.
The genuinely tribunal-only jurisdiction is the ACT, not New South Wales or Western Australia.
⚠️ Victoria: the correction duty is not on you, and that is the trap. Under s 439G(1) the duty sits on the rental provider, not the agent. A Victorian property manager who notifies the database operator has done a sensible thing but has not discharged the rental provider's obligation. Tell the rental provider in writing, within the same 7 days, that the listing is wrong and that s 439G requires them to have it amended or removed. Record that you did. The penalty exposure at ss 439G and 439H lands on them, and an agent who never told them is in an obvious position.
Also correct in Western Australia: the deadlines are s 82G (7 days for the listing agent or lessor to notify) and s 82H (14 days for the operator to act). Section 82J is the disputes route and carries no deadline of its own.
Step 0: should this listing ever have been made?
Ask this before you ask how to amend it, because if the pre-conditions were missed the listing was unlawfully made, which is a tenancy-law exposure separate from anything in the Privacy Act, and correcting it quietly does not cure it.
The common floor across states:
The tenancy must have ended. You cannot list a current tenant. This is the one agencies get wrong most often, usually while a dispute is still running.
The listing must name a specific former tenant who was a party to the agreement.
Arrears alone is never enough. Every state requires a permitted ground, typically a breach where the amount owed exceeds the bond, or a tribunal or court order. ⚠️ Queensland's threshold is lower than the usual "more than the bond" rule of thumb. Under the RTRA Regulation 2025 s 25 it can be as little as one week's rent where no bond was paid, so do not carry a "bond plus" assumption across the border.
The tenant must be told first and given time to object, commonly at least 14 days, and you must actually consider the objection rather than log it. ⚠️ In the Northern Territory the objection period is 28 days, not 14 (Residential Tenancies Act 1999 (NT) s 129(1)(b)).
⚠️ The Northern Territory is stricter again, in two ways that catch agents out. Under s 128(1)(c) you cannot self-assess the breach: the person must have agreed in writing that the breach occurred, or NTCAT must have found that it did. Your own view that they breached is not a ground. And under s 128(4), threatening to list a person during a live tenancy is a strict-liability offence. That means the "pay up or you go on the database" line, which is still used as leverage in arrears conversations, is itself the offence in the NT, and it is committed whether or not you ever intended to lodge anything.
Family or domestic violence: do not list, and get advice. The absence of a statutory ban is not permission. An express prohibition exists only in Victoria (broad) and New South Wales (narrow, only where that person gave a domestic violence termination notice). Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia give a tribunal or court a discretion, which is not a ban, and no Tasmanian provision was found. If family violence is anywhere in the tenancy history, stop before lodging anything. What the other jurisdictions actually give you is not one thing, so do not summarise it as 'a tribunal can order removal'.Western Australia is stronger than a discretion: s 82J(2A) deems a listing unjust where the circumstances result from family violence, so the unjustness is not argued, only the remedy is - and the forum is a court, not a tribunal. South Australia is prospective only: SACAT may order that a person must not be listed as an additional order in a domestic-abuse termination proceeding (s 89A(4)(d), backed by the listing gateway s 99F(1)(e)), but there is no power to remove an existing listing on family-violence grounds and no removal duty once abuse surfaces afterwards. Worse, SA's rooming-house analogue s 105UA carries no equivalent at all, so a rooming-house resident escaping abuse has no anti-listing route whatsoever. Tasmania's route runs through the Commissioner, not a tribunal. Queensland, the ACT and the Northern Territory are genuine tribunal discretions. The practical instruction is unchanged in every jurisdiction: do not list, and get advice.
If family violence surfaces after a listing already exists, removal is a live duty, not a courtesy. In Victoria, ss 439G(1)(b) and 439G(2)(c) make removal a mandatory duty on the same 7-day clock. Victoria also prohibits making the listing in the first place where the person objected on family-violence grounds and provided the prescribed evidence: s 439F(7). Elsewhere, treat late-surfacing family violence as a reason to seek removal and take advice immediately rather than waiting for the tenant to run a dispute.
What is the right sequence when a tenant disputes a listing?
1. Check step 0 above. If the listing should not have been made, the issue is the listing itself, not its accuracy. 2. Act on the state clock. Notify the database operator within your state's 7-day period, or correct it directly where your state allows that. In Victoria, tell the rental provider in writing within the same 7 days, because s 439G(1) puts the duty on them. 3. Correct your own record too. APP 13 attaches to the information you hold, not only to the operator's copy. Telling the tenant to take it up with the operator and stopping there is not a complete response. 4. Check the underlying figure is reconciled. APP 10.2 requires such steps (if any) as are reasonable in the circumstances to ensure information you disclose is accurate, up to date, complete and relevant, having regard to the purpose of the disclosure. A listing built on an unreconciled ledger fails that and is long-lived. 5. Confirm in writing to the tenant what you have corrected and what you have asked the operator to do. 6. Notify others if asked. Under APP 13.2, where you have corrected information previously disclosed to another APP entity and the individual asks you to notify them, take such steps (if any) as are reasonable in the circumstances to do so. That duty depends on the individual asking; the 7-day state duty above does not. A database operator is an APP entity for its database activities whatever its turnover. An individual landlord usually is not, so notifying them is good practice and supported by APP 10.2, rather than compelled by APP 13.2. 7. Keep the evidence. A disputed listing can end up in a tribunal or court process as well as a privacy complaint.
How do the state rules and APP 13 fit together?
They stack, and the shorter deadline wins in practice. State residential-tenancies law sets who may be listed, on what grounds, with what notice, and how fast a wrong listing must be fixed. The Privacy Act sets a general correction duty on the information you hold: APP 13.1 requires such steps (if any) as are reasonable in the circumstances to correct it. Note that APP 13.1 has two triggers, and like the state duty one of them does not need a request: 13.1(b)(i) where you are satisfied the information is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading having regard to a purpose for which it is held, or 13.1(b)(ii) where the individual asks. APP 13.5(a)(ii) requires an organisation to respond within a reasonable period.
Where you decline to correct, APP 13.3 requires written reasons and the complaint mechanisms, and APP 13.4 requires reasonable steps to associate a statement of the person's disagreement with the information if they ask. None of that displaces the state deadline.
Sources: Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), APP 10.2, APP 13.1 to 13.5 (Schedule 1); s 6E(2) and the Privacy Regulations 2025 (Cth) ss 5 and 7(1)-(2), commenced 1 April 2026, under which a residential tenancy database operator is treated as an organisation regardless of turnover, with that treatment confined to the prescribed database acts and practices, so the coverage runs to its database activities rather than to everything it does, and under which such a database must both hold tenancy-occupation information and be accessible to someone other than the operator; the relevant state or territory Residential Tenancies Act, including Residential Tenancies Act 2010 (NSW) ss 213, 213A, 214, 215, 216, 217; Residential Tenancies Act 1997 (Vic) Part 10A including ss 439E(3), 439F(7), 439G and 439H; Residential Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation Act 2008 (Qld) s 459A and the RTRA Regulation 2025 Part 7 including s 25; Residential Tenancies Act 1987 (WA) ss 82E, 82F, 82G, 82H and 82J; Residential Tenancies Act 1995 (SA) s 99H; Residential Tenancy Act 1997 (Tas) s 48ZA; Residential Tenancies Act 1997 (ACT) s 93; Residential Tenancies Act 1999 (NT) ss 128, 129 and 130 · OAIC APP Guidelines chapter 13 · OAIC APP guidelines
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