Housing SA "Hellor Court" - Radio Transcript - Monday 5 December 2011

Rob Brokenshire, Family First (5AA 11.07-11.16) Disruptive Housing SA tenants


(Byner: …you’ve heard on this program for some time complaints from good law abiding public housing tenants who complained to Housing SA about disruptive tenants and some of them are downright criminal yet the tenants are still there today. Allegations came to light over the weekend that took this situation to another level – Mellor Court, Gilberton, is being referred to by tenants as ‘Hellor Court’ and sounds more like something from a crime-riddled American housing project on television than in suburban Adelaide. Many tenants testify that a gang is living in the estate who are bashing people, breaking into cars and homes, doing and dealing in drugs, using stand over tactics to get money out of tenants … how is this allowed to go on in 21st century South Australia? Police say they’ve attended the estate but the behaviour continues … you might recall some years ago when now-Premier Weatherill was the Housing Minister, in response to public outrage about disruptive tenants, he announced that a three strikes and you’re out policy was now in place. However, examples like ‘Hellor Court’ prove it was never implemented. Or maybe it’s incompetence – tenants regularly complain that their own complaints are not registered on the Housing SA database. If this is a three strikes policy it seems to get strike the referee has to be watching the game and not staring at his own navel. The Government had several concerns about the content of the Housing SA report tabled last fortnight in Parliament, one being $16 million of tenant debt, including property damage – but get this, 6600 … tenant complaints, and that’s just the strikes that Housing SA record, 100 a week, 18 a day … you know what this boils down to, Housing SA couldn’t give a toss and yet we’re paying a bloke around not far from $400,000 a year to manage this – it ain’t managing. Robert Brokenshire, what on earth are we going to do about this?)

… I think your listeners, a lot of us in politics and certainly the way you’ve championed the cause for those people that are very badly affected by this shocking behaviour of a percentage of the tenants are at our wits end and we can’t let this go on; we have to make a commitment to actually fight this tooth and nail next year. You rightly pointed out in your editorial that the now Premier Jay Weatherill nearly five years ago … made a commitment three strikes and you’re out, it has not been applied as far as I can see and in fact for your listeners’ information, the 7,000 disruptive tenants in the annual report … there was less than 1% of those that were actually evicted, would you believe – less than 1% … so therefore what they’re doing at the moment is not working, and I was involved in that story on the weekend because what it confirms is that the phone calls coming into my office and into your radio station every day by good people that have just had enough … I can also tell you I’m advised that the police actually have had to go and protect one of the tenants when they could not live there any more and wanted to be safely escorted off the property and shifted to another location – that’s how bad it’s got there.

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Back to Robert Brokenshire

(Byner: …Rob, what can you do?)

… a couple of things … I’ve actually put what the Government committed to and didn’t deliver on, and that’s the three strikes and you’re out policy, also into legislation … I’ll be talking to my colleagues based on what’s happened at “Hellor Court” and asking them to support it. We’ve actually gone a step further and I haven’t advised your listeners of this but we also have a chorus in there that if you’re found actually manufacturing illicit drugs or dealing in illicit drugs and there are allegations that this has been happening in “Hellor Court” … that you’ll be out immediately, it won’t even be three strikes because unless this Government actually now comes down tough on the felons and the offenders and starts to look after all the good tenants, I think you’ll find there’ll be serious revolt by a lot of people in public housing because they’re not going to stand for this any more, and if people like Nick and myself and other MPs are prepared to shoulder to shoulder them from next year let’s hope we can get some reform in this because it’s not acceptable.

(Byner: …thank you … I need to ring my colleague at Channel Seven, the Executive Producer of Today Tonight, because I understand that a couple of residents have very bravely filmed some very interesting footage at Mellor Court and this is going to be a very interesting media circus because … I have suspected for some time that when people ring Housing SA, depending on who they get, they may or may not log the complaint, even if it’s made in writing … there’s some internal policy that is giving more than an even break to criminals who know they can play the system and the orchestra sounds magic.)

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