Australian States do not have uniform leglislation for the duty of disclosure.
The current matrix would appear to be (NSW, Vic, SA and the ACT) have enacted legislation affording more protection to buyers by requiring vendors to disclose certain information about their property prior to Contract.
In other Australian jurisdictions (WA,QLD, and the NT) the standard form contract used in property sales has been developed to encourage vendor disclosure.
Tasmania is the last State that still relies on the common law principle of caveat emptor.
The principle of caveat emptor (or buyer beware) is premised on the ability of the purchaser to discover by inspection any defects in the property being purchased. In accordance with this principle, at common law, a purchaser has the right to rescind a contract for the sale of property only if:
• the vendor has failed to disclose defects with the title of the property; and
• those defects are not discoverable by a normal inspection of the property.
This state of affairs reminds me to pull out my old copy of Voumard and debate the distinctions between a a defect in title that would allow rescission, as against something that only goes to a defect in the quality of the title (and therefore does not permit the purchaser to rescind the contract)
Summary: The current law in Tasmania requires vendors of residential property to disclose little information to purchasers about the property. The common law principle of caveat emptor has the effect of requiring only that matters constituting a defect in title be disclosed – matters affecting the quality of the title need not be disclosed. Case law demonstrates that the distinction between these two categories is not always obvious.
Source Tasmania Law Reform Institute Final Report No 5 Sep 2004 on Vendor Disclosure
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