Page 511 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 5 March 2008
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Tribunal, and is there a formal meeting between the police and Housing ACT to ensure your department is notified of people who are disruptive?
MR HARGREAVES: Mr Speaker, I do not think I can provide the information in the way Mr Mulcahy has described it here. I would invite Mr Mulcahy to contact my office at a time convenient, and I will have him briefed by our officers on the detail. The problem is that Housing ACT are not the only people who can apply to the Residential Tenancies Tribunal. They are also not the only people who would notify the police with respect to a given behaviour. Often we are brought in when other things have not worked, so we will not necessarily know the extent to which somebody is a repeat offender.
As I have tried to indicate, there is a chain of events which occur before we actually seek eviction. If there is illegal activity—let me be absolutely crystal clear about this—it is a police matter and they need to act and do something about it. When it comes to non-illegal activity which is disruptive, we have that chain of events. We talk about interventions with the neighbourhood and not only with individuals. We talk to individuals about alcohol and drug services, mental health services, anger management, debt counselling and a whole range of other issues. But also, when it comes to the neighbourhood around there, we actually offer mediation and conflict resolution, and our housing managers go into these areas and deliver.
I need to tell the Assembly, Mr Speaker, that we need to put this into a certain perspective. Mrs Burke is well known for going out into the media and whipping up—
MR SPEAKER: Order! This is not about Mrs Burke.
MR HARGREAVES: This is about disruptive tenants, Mr Speaker. I refer to the image of disruptive tenants being put out by members of this place. This goes to the issue that Mr Mulcahy is talking about—disruptive tenants. We have 11,500 tenancies in Housing ACT’s portfolio—that is 23,000 people who are tenants within Housing ACT. Less than one per cent of those people are disruptive, and an even smaller percentage of those are the ones who are repeat offenders.
Mrs Burke: How many of the community are being affected? That’s the point.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mrs Burke!
MR HARGREAVES: Mr Speaker, this is a very small number of people within the tenancies of Housing ACT.
Mr Pratt: Where’s your duty of care to the others, John?
MR HARGREAVES: God, you are a tiresome individual, you really are.
MR SPEAKER: Mr Pratt, cease interjecting.
MR HARGREAVES: A tiresome individual. Dear, oh dear, I hope I come back to this place for another four years and you are not here.
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