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Speaker 1: Godgather due to see either that statement you just made

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Speaker 1: about putting down dogs makes you a monster, but you're

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Speaker 1: a selfish, crap cat person. No, just a person person.

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Speaker 1: I'd prefer it if people lived nineteen past five. Now,

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Speaker 1: if you're a landlord, there's something worth knowing. It's a

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Speaker 1: bit of a gray area how much information you are

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Speaker 1: allowed to glean from your tenants social media accounts to

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Speaker 1: prove that they're lying to you. Now, this is after

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Speaker 1: a case where tenants pretended they only had cats. They

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Speaker 1: did actually have a dog. It was doing a lot

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Speaker 1: of damage in the house, and social media proved this.

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Speaker 1: Mike Thornton is a solicitor with the expertise in landlord

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Speaker 1: and tenant law and he's with us.

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Speaker 2: Now, Hi, Mike, Hi, Heather, how are you.

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Speaker 1: I'm very well, thank you mate. Now, in this case

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Speaker 1: they pretend they small, black and blue, they just had cats,

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Speaker 1: and in the end it was the dog's birthday on

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Speaker 1: Insta or whatever that proved a dog was there. Was

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Speaker 1: that okay?

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Speaker 2: Yep? Well it was okay for the landlord to use

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Speaker 2: it once it knew about it. There was a public

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Speaker 2: statement Happy one year in my Rocky, which is a

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Speaker 2: dog's name as soon as the dogs. Since the landlord

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Speaker 2: had seen that, not the dog had seen that, they

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Speaker 2: were entitled to use it because it was publicly available information.

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Speaker 1: So does it is the difference here read the gray area,

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Speaker 1: whether this is publicly available, whether it's a locked accounting

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Speaker 1: you're snooping on it.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, there's some very clear guidelines on the Privacy Commission's

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Speaker 2: website about what a landlord can and can't collect. It

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Speaker 2: can't require, for example, social media URLs to have a

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Speaker 2: look at what the tenants are up to, and it

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Speaker 2: couldn't pay someone to get that information surreptitiously, for example.

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Speaker 2: But if there is, and it seems to be being

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Speaker 2: accepted in the tendant Sectribilla's decision that if there is

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Speaker 2: publicly available information, once the landlord knows about it, that

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Speaker 2: can go to the tenant and say, hey, I've learnt this.

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Speaker 2: Do you have a dog? And that's exactly what happened.

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Speaker 1: What if Mike, you've got a mate who's friends with

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Speaker 1: the tenant, the mate screen grabs something and sends it

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Speaker 1: to you, So it's a locked account, you haven't gone snooping.

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Speaker 1: You been sent to this information.

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Speaker 2: Can you use it that's the gray area. If you'd

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Speaker 2: got it in a way that compromised the privacy of

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Speaker 2: the tenanty, you would have to be very careful about

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Speaker 2: making use of it.

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Speaker 1: So if you were the judge sitting in arbitration here,

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Speaker 1: would you what's more important the breaching of the rules

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Speaker 1: and the damage to the property or the tenants privacy.

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Speaker 2: Well, unusually in this case, this is all about the

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Speaker 2: cost of rectifying the damage by the unlawful pet and

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Speaker 2: the landlord claimed that quite a substantial amount of almost

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Speaker 2: twenty two thousand dollars for repairs the landlord said had

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Speaker 2: to happen to the house. Now, only some of that

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Speaker 2: was related to replacing a carpet because of apparently it

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Speaker 2: smelt of the dog, But the tendency tribunal reduced it

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Speaker 2: down to only the amount of the bond, about three

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Speaker 2: and a half thousand. So I think the tenancy tribunal

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Speaker 2: is much more concerned about what's a fair outcome between

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Speaker 2: these parties than getting too concerned about that we're the

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Speaker 2: information came from. Although it's pretty clear that the tribunal

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Speaker 2: accepted that the information was publicly available, so it didn't

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Speaker 2: really have to consider the situation where the information had

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Speaker 2: been got in some other way that might have breached privacy.

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Speaker 1: Interesting. Hey, Mike, thanks for talking us. We'd appreciate as

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Speaker 1: Mike Thornton's solicitor. For more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive,

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Speaker 1: Listen live to news talks that'd be from four pm weekdays,

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