Minister Flegg has just announced he’s on the lookout for parcel of land in Logan where his department can develop 200 units of housing at a multimillion dollar pricetag.  As a public private partnership and with a view to achieving mixed communities, only a proportion of the units will end up as social housing.

According to the Minister, it’s the ‘scrimping and saving’ that’s made the project possible, including the ‘contraversial axing of a tenants advisory service’, and freed up money for the government to contribute.

Scrimping and saving?? Given that tenant advice funding is derived mainly from tenant bond interest, isn’t it more like an additional tax on tenants, an appropriation of their bond interest at the expense of the only direct benefit they get from it – tenant advice services? 

These monies are simply not the government’s to save or scrimp.

In reality just a small amount of the money government will have to contribute to the project would fund the entire network of tenant advice services for the whole year.  Instead though, the government has turned it’s back on the 500,000 renting households in the state who will now be without access to free independent advice and advocacy services.

Interestingly, the article refers to the ‘contraversial’ decision to axe the tenant advisory service.  Keep those letters rolling in!  Click here to read the Courier Mail article.