I have started and stopped three posts in this section so far tonight. I am too tired and ill to really get my teeth into the things I want to cover but I am burning to make a record of what I believe I have seen and the very devastating holes in the net of tenancy protection in NSW which is the only state I can comment on.

I would like to make an analysis of all that has gone on over the last five to seven months with regard to this tenancy. Once again the position opens to the place where I am forced to be some kind of whistle blower just to talk about what has been happening and I am arrogant enough to resent that and the backlash it will bring while I am il.

At this time of night and this mood I might suggest that the latest version of the Residential Tenancies Act 2010 No 42 has been cut down to slice away a great deal of the already limited and complex protections earlier legislators tried to provide tenants..

The Police have absolute contempt for the Act where it covers the tenant’s rights although they enforce agent’s and landlord’s rights with great passion apparently because the Police are themselves home owners or becoming home owners and have contempt for those who were unable to earn wages or salaries of enough capacity to become landed. There are other related reasons of course. Several of them. Local Police often went to school with agents and land lords in their age groups. They are in the same community organisations and lodges. Every officer, in every Police station is living somewhere and their homes are rented or sold to them by agent’s. Often those agents and landlords are people who they grew up alongside, party with and may be family to.

Many of the river of tenants flowing about the countryside in this period of history make up the great migration of people driven out of cities and then suburbs by gentrification, rising costs of rent and buying and demolition or sale of public housing. They certainly have no similar protection from the people they must deal with in their new towns. The person whose mind immediately flicks to the sight of a house with all the walls busted and the carpet with feces on it might see a monstrous tenant although rather than showing a tenant of great evil it may show a place where a tenant has had no other outlet to display their despair at an unfair deal.Do you want to pull me up and say”So you agree with…” I say to you kiss my hairy backside, you are playing with words and I am not a polite person in your local debating group.

The Tribunal are unable to run timely hearings although we will get into that in the more detailed analysis. The Tribunal are also unable to ensure that the act is enforced. The fact is that the nature of the Tribunal and it’s members is such that the tenant is at a serious disadvantage before they ever cross the threshold. The usual kind of tenant flooding through the tribunal hearings is poorer and less educated and often unable to meet the requirements for the provision of evidence or even for a standard of clothing that would see them on an equal ranking as estate agents and land lords. The people I saw as I exited the tribunal building today looked terrified and hungry and I hope the Tribunal was able to assist them. I am sure it does great good most of the time. My points, I hope, are more in the nature of plugging holes before they bleed too many people.

The problems with Police are systemic. They will always be there and while I know the Police are not creating the situation it is one very powerful reason for certain kinds of very energetic oversight. This week I have seen Police and their advocates very comfortable with behaviour that drew my mind back to the corrupt land grabs of the 1970s. The casual disregard of certain people and the open protection of others is looming towards becoming corruption. I have said before that when I speak of Police in this manner I am aware that the corruption I am speaking about is not an intentional criminal enterprise but something any of us would find ourselves doing in the circumstances. I thought one way of dealing with the perception and limiting the opportunity might be to use some form of Police Housing service that deals with the agents on behalf of officers although nothing can change the old connections made during childhood

The Members of the Tribunal are as fair as they can be but themselves are well paid and from a different class and culture. The Tribunal deals with so many vicious disputes that it is inclined to overlook some crimes and cruelty to get an outcome that will still the waters, that is as it should be but the agents I have seen lately have flown high and in plain sight while they trampled all over the act and the law and its many parts. The tribunal I saw could even have placed itself in the situation where it faces accusations of impropriety. The way cases were extended out long beyond reasonable periods by Members handing out piecemeal orders and decrees and then punished the applicant by pressuring them about lengthy periods they were in no position to do anything about. There have to be limits to what is being overlooked in the interests of smooth water and fair dealing.  I have said elsewhere that the places people live in are not doll houses and the people are not coolies or vassals. Where someone has met the requirements of the act and the law and is still being treated badly there has to be better outcomes. To put another thought bluntly. The home owner who rents their house out should be made aware that the humans in the house are not casual subjects to be ejected just because they owner had itchy nuts this morning. I was ejected over my pressing of my rights as a tenant which is my right and placed in a position in the  Tribunal where there was no chance of a fair hearing.

Anyway I will sleep on it if it will let me and cough up some more fluff balls of thought in the morning.