Tenant seeks to overturn VCAT’s exclusive jurisidiction

In Ireland v Subway Systems Australia Pty Ltd and Subway Realty Pty Ltd [2012] VCAT 1061 a tenant contended if an agreement (which it contended was a licence) was held to be a lease then the dispute had to be determined by an arbitrator pursuant to an arbitration clause and not by VCAT.  The arbitration clause was contained in the a document separate from the lease. VCAT held that the agreement was a lease and therefore there was a “retail tenancy dispute” which, subject to the tenant’s argument about the Commercial Arbitration Act, would be governed by the dispute provisions of the RLA. If the tenant’s application had succeeded the whole regime of the dispute resolutions provisions in the RLA would have been displaced. The tenant argued that the arbitration clause should be given effect to because s 10 of the Commercial Arbitration Act 2011 was pronounced after the commencement of the 2003 Act and, by implication, repealed the provisions…