Zoe answered
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My landlord won't give my bond back. Where do I start?
“Start with the bond notice, the lease, and the payment record. The Residential Tenancies Act is probably the first source to check.”
Likely lawMissing factsNext step
Zoe Law (zoelaw.ai)
Australian legal information · Est. 2026
“Tell me what happened. I’ll show you where the law starts, what facts matter,
and what to do next.”
- 74,539
- Acts indexed
- 937,745
- Provisions
- 50,263
- AI analysed
Guides
Common legal problems
- NSW bond not returned
- End a NSW fixed-term lease early
- NSW landlord notice to end a tenancy
- NSW urgent repairs
- Challenging a NSW rent increase
- Pets in a NSW rental
- Mould in a NSW rental
- NSW landlord entry and inspections
- NSW rental water usage charges
- Claiming compensation as a NSW tenant
- Bond claimed for old carpet after a long tenancy (NSW and VIC)
- Agent call-out fees charged to renters (NSW and VIC)
- Responding to a landlord's NCAT or VCAT application
- Victorian bond not returned
- End a Victorian fixed-term lease early
- Victorian urgent repairs
- Victorian landlord notice to end a tenancy
- Challenging a Victorian rent increase
- Pets in a Victorian rental
- Mould in a Victorian rental
- Victorian landlord entry and inspections
- Claiming compensation as a Victorian renter
- Victorian rental water usage charges
- QLD bond not returned
- QLD landlord Notice to leave (Form 12)
- QLD urgent (emergency) repairs
- End a QLD fixed-term lease early
- Challenging a QLD rent increase
- Mould in a QLD rental
- QLD landlord entry and inspections
- QLD rental water usage charges
- Unfair deactivation for gig workers
- Employment lawyer costs in NSW
- Personal injury claim time limits in NSW
- No win, no fee personal injury claims in Victoria
- Property settlement time limits after divorce or separation
- Faulty goods: major vs minor refund
- Defective new car (ACL major failure)
- Cancel a door-to-door or cold-call sale
- Unfair contract terms (ACL)
- Chargebacks and debit card disputes
- Cancelled or delayed flight refund
- NBN connection delays
- Insurance claim denied or delayed
- Energy bill dispute (ombudsman)
- Power or gas disconnection notice (payment plan, hardship, ombudsman)
- Debt collector harassment
- Financial hardship (ask lender, then AFCA)
- Fix an error on your credit report
- FOI request refused or ignored (internal or OAIC review)
- Privacy complaint to the OAIC (organisation first, then OAIC)
- NDIS decision review (NDIA internal review, then the ART)
- BNPL hardship (Afterpay, Zip, Klarna, then AFCA)
- Mistaken or unauthorised bank transfer
- NSW strata mediation then NCAT
- Victorian owners corporation disputes
- Unfair dismissal (FWC Form F2)
- Recover unpaid wages (FWO / small claims)
- Unpaid super (report it to the ATO)
- FEG: employer insolvent, wages owed
- Debt too old to chase in court
- Statutory demand on your company (21 days)
- Wrong telco bill (TIO complaint)
Budget night analysis
Australian Budget 2026-27
Plain-English summary and deep dive on the official Budget, with a practical read on tax, spending, business incentives, and the tradeoffs hiding underneath the headline measures.
Why Zoe
Law is public.
Understanding it should be too.
Australian legislation. Searchable.
Australian legislation across 9 jurisdictions - structured, searchable, and readable.
Amendment Tracking
Daily sync with legislation registries, with section-level diffs and plain-English summaries when the law moves.
Plain English AI
Acts summarised in normal language, with complexity signals and the awkward bits brought into the light.
Absurdities & Conflicts
AI-flagged absurdities, contradictions, clashes, overlaps, and gaps across all 9 jurisdictions.
Ask Zoe
Start with a legal problem in normal language. Zoe finds the likely law, missing facts, sources, and next sensible step.
Knowledge Graph
Every cross-reference and amendment chain mapped. See how a single change cascades across connected Acts.
REST API
Full API access to every Act, section, version, and AI analysis result. Build on top of structured legislation.
Monitoring & Alerts
Get notified when legislation you care about changes. Email, Slack, or custom monitoring rules.
The law is written down.
Zoe makes it usable.
Ask Zoe what matters, what law may apply, what evidence is missing, and what to do next - with answers grounded in source text.
Why not just ask ChatGPT?
Because it remembers the law. Zoe reads it.
A general model recalls the law from its training data and fills the gaps with plausible-sounding guesses. Zoe is grounded in the live Australian corpus. Answers point back to the section or case they draw from, so you can read the original.
ChatGPT invents cases.
Australian lawyers have been referred to regulators and hit with costs orders for citing cases a general AI made up. Zoe shows you the real section, or tells you it can't find one.
ChatGPT's law is frozen.
It answers from a training cutoff and quietly quotes provisions that have since changed. Zoe reads from a continuously updated corpus and links each answer to the source section, so you can check the current text yourself.
ChatGPT blends jurisdictions.
Ask an Australian question and you can get confident US law, or NSW law for a Victorian problem. Zoe reads the jurisdiction-specific Act, not a blend.
Live Updates
Recent Changes
- ActDefence Act 1903
Amended by Defence Amendment (Parliamentary Joint Committee on Defence) Act 2026 (sch 1 (items 1, 2)).
Defence Amendment (Parliamentary Joint Committee on Defence) Act 20261 modified - ActRoyal Commissions Act 1902
Amended by Royal Commissions Legislation Amendment (Protections for Providing Information) Act 2026 (sch 1 (item 1)).
Royal Commissions Legislation Amendment (Protections for Providing Information) Act 20261 modified - ActCustoms Act 1901
Amended by Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Act 2026 (sch 1 (items 11-13); sch 2 (item 122)).
Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Act 20262 modified - ActExcise Act 1901
Amended by Treasury Laws Amendment (Strengthening Financial Systems and Other Measures) Act 2025 (sch 4 (items 54-61)).
Treasury Laws Amendment (Strengthening Financial Systems and Other Measures) Act 20251 modified - ActCustoms Act 1901
Amended by Criminal Code Amendment (State Sponsors of Terrorism) Act 2025 (sch 3 (items 44-46)).
Criminal Code Amendment (State Sponsors of Terrorism) Act 20251 modified
Early Warning System
Bills Before Parliament
Legislation in the making. Track Bills as they move through Parliament - before they become law.
Introduced28 May
Crimes (Coercive Control) Amendment Bill 2026
What this Bill does mechanics first - Creates a new criminal offence called "coercive control of a family member" in the Crimes Act new Part 3B, especially section 72J. The offence targets an adult who engag...
View Bill
Second Reading13 May
Building Services Legislation Amendment (Financial Oversight) Bill 2026
What the Bill does mechanics first - Gives the Building Services Board and Building Commissioner new powers to police the financial capacity and behaviour of registered building service contractors and pract...
View Bill
Introduced7 May
Justice and Community Safety Legislation Amendment Bill 2026
What this Bill changes mechanically - Repeals an earlier Act: the Crimes Child Sex Offenders Amendment Act 2025 is repealed cl 4. - Lets an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Young People Com...
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Second Reading7 May
Appropriation (Recurrent 2026–27) Bill 2026
What this law does, in plain English - It authorises the Western Australian Government to withdraw $37,008,834,000 from the Consolidated Account to pay for recurrent day‑to‑day government services and activi...
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Second Reading7 May
Appropriation (Capital 2026–27) Bill 2026
What this Bill does mechanics - Grants a single capital supply of $10,045,138,000 to be drawn from the Consolidated Account for the financial year beginning 1 July 2026 and ending 30 June 2027 section 31. -...
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Introduced6 May
Better Regulation Legislation Amendment Bill 2026
What this Bill does, in plain language - The Bill standardises how many ACT government registers and licence lists are published: instead of requiring physical inspection or vague availability, it generally...
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Introduced6 May
Bail Amendment Bill 2026
What this Bill changes mechanically - Rewrites the core test courts and authorised officers must use when deciding bail new section 22. The decision must explicitly consider: the likelihood the accused will...
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Second Reading6 May
Electricity Industry Amendment (Capital Charges) Bill 2026
What this Bill does mechanically - Inserts a new Part 9C into the Electricity Industry Act 2004 that creates a "Capital Charges Scheme" for certain transmission networks sections 129U–129ZD. The scheme: - al...
View Bill