The scoreboard
Does the jurisdiction's rental rule book require blind and curtain cords to be made safe?
| Jurisdiction | Cord-safety standard | What the rule book actually requires |
|---|---|---|
| Victoria | Yes, in force | All corded internal coverings, whatever their age, anchored so no loose loop of 220 mm or more can form within 1,600 mm of the floor; from 1 December 2025. Coverings themselves are also a minimum standard. Our explainer. Checked 5 July 2026. |
| NSW | Announced, not shown | The consolidated Residential Tenancies Regulation 2019, current version in force from 1 July 2026 and read 9 July 2026, contains no cord-safety standard; cords appear only in the list of minor alterations a tenant may make. Our paper trail. |
| Queensland | No | Nine minimum housing standards; window coverings appear only as privacy coverings in rooms where a tenant might reasonably expect them. Our story. Checked 5 July 2026. |
| South Australia | No | The Housing Safety Authority's minimum housing standards mention a window covering once: bedroom windows must have an openable curtain or blind, and that line is an additional standard for rooming houses only. No cord clause anywhere. Read 9 July 2026. |
| Tasmania | No | Section 36N of the Residential Tenancy Act 1997, in force since 1 August 2015, requires curtains or blinds covering each bedroom and living-area window. Nothing about cords. Read 9 July 2026. |
| Western Australia | No | No window-covering minimum standard in tenancy law. Consumer Protection WA points landlords to product-safety law, applying in WA since January 2004, and to their general duty to keep the premises safe. Read 9 July 2026. |
| ACT | No | The territory built the machinery for minimum housing standards in 2020; the only standard prescribed so far, in Part 3 of the Residential Tenancies Regulation 1998, is ceiling insulation. Window coverings are never mentioned. Read 9 July 2026. |
| Northern Territory | No | Sections 47 and 48 of the Residential Tenancies Act 1999 require premises to be habitable and to meet health and safety requirements. The Act never mentions a window covering, curtain, blind or cord. Read 9 July 2026. |
Sources: the consolidated in-force legislation for NSW, Tasmania, the ACT and the NT; the responsible authority's own standards pages for Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and WA. Every document was read in full on the date shown in its row. This table completes the three-state comparison we published on 5 July.
"Requires a blind" is not "requires a safe blind"
Three of the six no-cord-rule jurisdictions do put window coverings in their
rule books, and it is worth reading exactly what those words require. Tasmania's
standard, on the books since 2015 and the oldest of them, obliges an owner not to
let premises unless curtains or blinds cover each window
in rooms likely to be
used as a bedroom or living area. Queensland requires privacy coverings in rooms
where a tenant might reasonably expect them. South Australia's version, the
narrowest, attaches only to rooming houses, properties where two or more rooms
are let under separate agreements: bedroom windows there must have a curtain or
blind the resident can open and close. For an ordinary South Australian rental,
the minimum housing standards require a latch on openable external windows and
say nothing about coverings at all.
All three are privacy standards. They ask whether a covering exists and blocks the view, not how it is built or rigged. A corded blind whose looped cord reaches the floor of a child's bedroom satisfies every one of them. That is the material difference between this tier and Victoria's rule, which is a hazard standard: it asks about the cord itself, and it reaches every covering already hanging, whatever its age.
Three rule books never mention a window covering
Western Australia, the ACT and the Northern Territory sit in a third tier. WA
tenancy law contains no window-covering minimum standard; what WA renters and
landlords get instead is guidance. Consumer Protection WA's
cord-safety
page describes the national 220 mm and 1,600 mm installation test and tells a
renter to ask your landlord to secure cords and chains
; its
landlord
guidance notes that product-safety rules for corded coverings have applied in
WA since January 2004, several years before the national supply rule, and that a
landlord who ignores an unsafe cord risks a negligence claim under the general
duty of care. Advice and exposure, but no standard.
The ACT is the near-miss. Its Residential Tenancies Act has carried a regulation-making power for minimum housing standards since 2020, and the 2022 amending legislation built out the framework: advertising disclosure, record-keeping, rent-reduction consequences for non-compliance. What has actually been prescribed under that power, as at this week, is one standard: ceiling insulation. The Northern Territory's Act asks only that premises be habitable, meet health and safety requirements under an Act, and be reasonably clean; in the whole consolidated text, as in force at 1 August 2025, the words curtain, blind and cord never appear.
NSW, re-checked this week
Our 5 July paper trail found that NSW's announced rental cord rule was not visible anywhere in the state's own consolidated rule book. That is still true. The consolidated Residential Tenancies Regulation 2019's current version, in force from 1 July 2026 and read on 9 July, gained water-efficiency and smoke-alarm detail but no cord-safety standard; blind and curtain cords appear only where they have sat since 2019, in the list of minor alterations a landlord cannot unreasonably refuse, which lets a tenant install cleats or cord guides at their own initiative. Until the amending instrument becomes readable or the consolidation shows the rule, we count NSW as announced, not shown.
Why the federal law does not fill any of these gaps
Everywhere in Australia, two
federal instruments govern corded internal window coverings: a supply
standard from 30 December 2010 and an installation standard from 1 January 2015.
Both look forward only. A covering supplied and installed before those dates,
which describes a large share of the blinds in older rental stock, was never
captured by either, and no one is obliged to go back and check it. Victoria's own
regulatory impact statement gives that retrospectivity gap as the reason a rental
minimum standard was needed at all. In the six jurisdictions above with no cord
rule, the question who must fix the pre-2015 cord in a rental?
has the same
answer it had in Queensland when we
first asked it: no one.
What a landlord or renter can do, anywhere
Nothing in any of these rule books prevents doing what Victorian law now requires. The practical standard is public, national and cheap: secure every cord with a cleat at least 1,600 mm above the floor, or a tested cord guide, so no loose loop of 220 mm or longer can form within 1,600 mm of the floor. The ACCC's installation guide shows the fittings; Victoria's impact statement costed the job at $7.10 a window in materials and 15 minutes with a screwdriver. Seven rule books do not require it. None of them stops it.