Page 781 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 13 April 1994
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In making this suggestion I will make it quite clear that there is really no administrative financial saving by taking this action. However, public money is meant to be used for the purpose for which it was intended - that is, landlords should receive the rent to which they are entitled.
Mr Humphries: That is a radical idea, Greg.
MR CORNWELL: Yes, Mr Humphries, isn't it? The landlords are entitled to receive the rent. Under this scheme I believe that the tenant would be saved a minor inconvenience, shall we say, in not having to pass on the rent to the landlord. There is a somewhat cumbersome arrangement at the moment, members, whereby the Housing Trust pays the money by cheque to the rent relief tenant, who is then obliged to bank that money. There is seven days clearance on the cheque and then the tenant has to withdraw the money and pay it to the landlord. So there is a minor inconvenience involved in this. As I say, I do not believe that we should necessarily oblige the tenants to put up with that, but there is no administrative saving.
Strangely enough, my eminently sensible suggestion - if I may be immodest - was roundly attacked in the Valley View last week by the former Minister for Housing, Mr Connolly, who said that the onus is on the landlord to collect the rent. He was quoted as saying:
A landlord who allows their tenant to go a long way into arrears is not doing their job.
I thought this was a bit rich from the Housing Trust Minister when the Housing Trust has $5m in rent arrears. Indeed, Mr Connolly, a landlord who allows a tenant to go a long way into arrears is not doing his job. This probably explains why we have this problem.
Mr Connolly also, however, stated that we were somehow stigmatising these rent relief tenants. I do not accept that this is stigmatising anybody. The simple fact is that thousands of people in this city have money deducted and sent through their bank accounts, or sent by their employers, whatever you like, in payment of bills every day of the week. What about mortgages? Mortgage payments quite often are deducted from people's salaries. What about the bank orders that exist?
Mrs Carnell: Health insurance.
MR CORNWELL: Health insurance, Mrs Carnell mentions, quite rightly. There is no stigmatisation involved in this sort of thing. Why, therefore, should these tenants be stigmatised by the simple, sensible arrangement that I am suggesting? I would put it to you that it is possible that some of these tenants in this position might welcome the fact that the Housing Trust is sending the money direct to the landlord because it is not always an entire family that is spending this money that is otherwise used for rent. Sometimes it is only one member of that family. I am aware of numbers of women who would welcome the fact that the money was not coming through the household but rather was going forward and was out of the hands of their husband or their de facto. So I can see, again, a minor advantage there.
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