Page 2318 - Week 06 - Friday, 27 June 2008
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other matters of crime. I am troubled by it and I think that the people living in those facilities should not be living in fear.
I have also expressed concern about Red Hill. I had a shopping centre session there a little while ago and I was surrounded by residents and business people who said that people were dealing drugs at 10.30 on a Saturday morning in broad daylight. I am hearing of people there in their 60s who are terrified by these thugs working these estates, dealing drugs. The same issue was even raised in Garran, and I have to say that there are now sometimes up to three or four police visits a day, police foot patrols, in the Garran shops—but everybody in the area seems to be able to tell me where the drugs are being dealt. The police have asked me not to identify that, but I do not know how long that goes on.
These things are unacceptable in our society. I am not an advocate of the sympathetic approach—to assume that people have got into this position because of their parents, their upbringing or something else. People have to live within a certain social framework and respect the rights of others—and you are violating the rights of the overwhelming members of the community if you keep condoning and not enforcing the law with these offenders.
To make it very clear, I am not suggesting that the government should become some sort of lifestyle police for public housing tenants. I have some sympathy with the issue Dr Foskey raised about the dangers of saying that we should know about everything going on in somebody’s house. That is not on. But, once people are blatantly breaking the law, threatening, burning places and doing all manner of things of that nature, I think the sympathy must come to an end. What I am suggesting is that the basic requirements for renting a property be enforced properly to ensure that manifestly unreasonable behaviour is not tolerated in public housing properties. Proper disciplinary action to the few bad tenants is in fact a very kind thing to do for the vast majority of people.
A public housing tenant approached me the other day—Dr Foskey alluded to a similar scenario; whether it is the same scenario or it was a theoretical one I do not know—and said, “I was going to write a letter to the paper about you. You have got to appreciate that often the people causing the trouble have moved in with a tenant; a male partner has moved in with a woman who may be from a broken family or whatever circumstances, and it is the partner that causes the trouble on the estate.” But my view is that at the end of the day an adult person has to make certain decisions. If you are going to have somebody move in with you who is involved in criminal behaviour, is selling drugs or is violent to your neighbours, do not start coming and complaining, “My tenancy is suddenly at risk.” If you bring people like that into your property and let them engage in that sort of activity, you have to wear the consequence.
If it is beyond your mental capacity to deal with that, that is another issue. I do have real concerns that we do not have adequate facilities to deal with people with major mental health issues in the territory. But I do not condone the view that, because somebody else has come in and you are the unwilling victim who is the tenant, you should not be held responsible. People have to take responsibility. I strongly believe that a more vigorous approach is needed.
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