Rosemeadow: When the natives get restless ...

While Cherie Burton took a scorched earth, take-no-prisoners approach to social problems at Dubbo, David Borger appears to be attempting surgical removal of the offending families.

But first, the evictions have to be approved by "The Tribunal", the CTTT. Since October 2008, the CTTT has a new social housing division to deal with the huge volume of work sent its way by Housing NSW.

It will be interesting to see the Tribunal's verdict.

DH wonders whether

• the same legal processes were followed for the indigenous inhabitants of Dubbo
• the CTTT's social housing division is independant of both the Minister and HNSW

Watch this space, as she is awaiting advice from a legal eagle.

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Update 31 Jan 09

The legal eagle reminded DH that Dubbo was abt transfers, while Rosemeadow is abt evictions. DH still wonders what pressure was applied, and what legal recourse tenants might have had if they didn't want to move. Keep watching....

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DH has long contended that the CTTT was used, at huge cost to taxpayers, to intimidate tenants over trivial arrears, seemingly at the discretion of individual staff, giving huge scope to bloody-minded individuals to bully tenants.

For the saga of DH's own drama with the Tribunal Merry-go-round which nearly cost her her job and her sanity, check out this blog in the months of Jan to March 2006

1. DH gets Termination of Tenancy notice!
2. Just plain desperate... (the emotional cost of the process)
3. The outcome

DH has mixed feelings about evictions. Were she her former carefree and idealistic self, her response would have been that everyone must be housed, and adequate supports must furnished by the state. But having seen estates terrorised by a few tenants who are a danger to themselves and others, she wonders just how far the art of the possible extends.

She might once have agreed with Ben Franklin's (paraphrased) dictum that those who sacrifice civil liberties for the sake of perfect security, deserve neither. Yet to sacrifice the security of the reasonably responsible majority for the sake of the civil liberties of those who are simply not capable of exercising any responsibility, seems to defy basic comon sense rooted in the biological and evolutionary laws which must have some sway over all living things, with the possible exception of sociology professors...