The short answer...
You need to check the wording of your own Tenancy Agreement. The wording should be as follows, depending on when you entered into the agreement:
Before 1 March 2006:
There's unlikely to be anything about smoke alarms in the agreement. If there is, it should appear under "Additional Terms".
1 March 2006 to 30 January 2011:
19A. The landlord agrees:
19A.1 to install any smoke alarms that are required by law to be installed on the residential premises, and
19A.2 not to remove or interfere with the operation of any such smoke alarm except with reasonable excuse, and
19A.3 if any such smoke alarm has a replaceable battery (other than a back up battery), to ensure that a new battery is installed in the smoke alarm at the beginning of the term of this agreement and, if the battery needs to be replaced at any time, and the tenant is physically unable to change the battery, to replace the battery with a new battery as soon as reasonably practicable after being notified that the battery needs to be replaced.
19B. The tenant agrees:
19B.1 not to remove or interfere with the operation of any smoke alarm installed on the residential premises except with reasonable excuse, and
19B.2 if any such smoke alarm has a replaceable battery (other than a back up battery), to ensure that the battery is replaced whenever necessary or, if the tenant is physically unable to change the battery, to notify the landlord as soon as reasonably practicable after becoming aware that the battery needs to be replaced, and
19B.3 to notify the landlord if any smoke alarm installed on the residential premises is not functioning properly.
31 January 2011 onwards:
16. The tenant agrees:
16.4 that it is the tenant's responsibility to replace light globes and batteries for smoke detectors on the residential premises.
The long answer...
The information on the
fire.nsw.gov.au web site regarding "backup batteries" is obsolete. They got that information from the
NSW Residential Tenancies (Residential Premises) Amendment (Smoke Alarms) Regulation 2006, as referenced at the bottom of the page. The sole purpose of that amendment, was to update the Standard Form Tenancy Agreement and Condition Report as stipulated by Schedule 1 of the
NSW Residential Tenancies (Residential Premises) Regulation 1995. The amendment came into force on 1 March 2006, but the 1995 regulation it amended, was repealed 6 months later on 1 September when the
NSW Residential Tenancies Regulation 2006 came into force. The 2006 regulation then stayed in force until the current legislation was enacted in 2011 with different wording.
So to put it simply, the references to "backup batteries" on the Fire NSW web page are 9 years out of date.
The current legislation came into force on 31 January 2011 and applies to all residential tenancy agreements, including existing agreements made under previous legislation. The current legislation is:
NSW Residential Tenancies Act 2010
NSW Residential Tenancies Regulation 2010 (<- Due to be repealed on 23 March 2020 when the NSW Residential Tenancies Regulation 2019 comes into force.)
Neither the current act nor the regulation stipulate who is responsible for the maintenance of smoke alarms. The act only mentions smoke alarms once (in section 55(2) which relates to a landlords rights to access) and the regulations only mention smoke alarms in the Standard Form Tenancy Agreement and Condition Report in Schedules 1 and 2 respectively.
As neither the act nor the regulation contain any sections about smoke alarm maintenance, there is nothing but the prescribed forms to rely on. Because prescribed forms are templates for physical documents, they only apply to new agreements and when they change, those changes don't automatically apply to existing agreements. (I believe this has been successfully tested at NCAT.)
What this all means, is that neither the act nor the regulation stipulate who is responsible for changing smoke alarm batteries. Only the tenancy agreement itself does, therefore you need to check the wording of your own agreement.
This will all get a lot more complicated in March this year with amendments to the act and a new regulation. The act will have a new section at 64A about smoke alarms and the new regulation will contain all the details in sections 13 to 21. These changes will apply to both new and existing tenancy agreements.
The amending Act is the
Residential Tenancies Amendment (Review) Act 2018, but it doesn't state a commencement date yet. Given that the new regulation does have a commencement date and it references the new sections of the act, it looks like both will be enacted on 23 March 2020.
