Cassy O’Connor MP | Greens Leader and Human Services spokesperson
Community sector organisations working at the front line of housing disadvantage have written to Housing Minister, Roger Jaensch, today calling on him to rule out any of the government’s previously planned changes to tenancy protections.
The Tenants Union of Tasmania, Shelter, CLCs (Tas), Anglicare and TasCOSS have co-signed a letter on behalf of the 13 000 Housing Tasmania and community housing tenants whose security of tenure would be gravely compromised if the planned changes went ahead.
Minister Jaensch might have been able to get away with pretending to Parliament he didn’t know about the government decision to weaken tenancy protections, but the community sector clearly understand he was right in the thick of it.
The Liberals need to categorically rule out revisiting their previous decision to amend the Residential Tenancy Act 1997 to remove the need for landlords to have ‘genuine or just’ reason for evicting a tenant from their homes.
That they wanted to do this in the first place, at the height of a housing and homelessness crisis, is damning. That they subsequently lied about the plan in Parliament, even more so.
The Greens don’t trust Roger Jaensch, but Tasmanian tenants need to trust that the Gutwein Government has no plans to make it easier to turf them from their homes in the future.