Tuesday, September 22, 2009

4 Corners: Last Chance Motel: Whose fault?

Anyone who watched this heartbreaking ABC doco about homeless families in NSW must be wondering: how can this have happened in a wealthy country like ours?

The fact that the Howard Government did nothing about Housing for 11 years cd have something to do with it.

Should Howard, and his Clayton's Housing Ministers (there was no housing ministry), be compelled to face a few restorative justice sessions with some of the 150,000 victims of his neglect? Guess he was too busy bashing the poor to give them a "hand up", let alone a hand out.

Then there are the immigration quotas of 168,000 per annum: where are these people going to live? Oh, yeah, 38 to a bedroom... Now there's a solution...

And now Labor cuts $750 million out of the Housing stimulus package while the silvertail schools get another paint job. There go 800 houses, which would house, (guesstimating), 2,400 people.

But according to some ninny who wrote into the ABC's comments page, one homeless couple have only themselves to blame because they were doing a TAFE course instead of running around like lunatics looking for non-existent jobs.

2 comments:

LuvYaWork said...

It's all their own fault too 'cos they:
(a) smoke cigarettes
(b) irresponsibly have children
.. of course.
(according to other abc forum peanuts)...

How come you let Carr off, surely this problem built up substantially under his watch. I don't imagine grubby homeless peasants were very interesting to His Bobness... maybe grubby homeless peasants in Imperial Rome he might have given thought to, but not from contemproray Sydney.

It's all good good for the motel owners but hey... 900 bucks a week from the government per room, no shortage of customers, no-one interested in making sure of quality of service/accomodation is up to scratch... too easy. I wonder how much money for jam they are scooping up from the public purse in the whole temporary accomodation scam. I guess it would be in nsw sate gov't budget papers, in other juriusdictions tender details for such contracts are publicly available. Cheers

OUT IN THE OPEN, Sydney, NSW Australia said...

Housing NSW changed the law to stop me complaining about their abusive behaviour towards me by withdrawing a clause from the Retirement Villages Act. I live in a retirement village where Housing NSW is involved in a 'joint venture' with the local council and a religious body. This means half its occupants are lowly public housing tenants and the other swanky self-funded residents. It's apartheid social class-style. In mid-2007 the Office of Fair Trading told me that as a PHT I was covered by the RVA along with the other lot. But then Housing NSW caught wind of what I was doing and told the OFT to remove the 'joint venture' clause from the RVA which it did at the end of last year. This means that now PHTs living in joint venture retirement villages are now only covered by a standard lease under the Residential Tenancy Act. This conveniently sweeps any claims of discrimation or harassment under the mat because they are not covered by this act. What a scurrilous lot this Labor government are.