HOME SWEET HOME?

There have been a series of heart-rending stories in the media in recent days –first in the Leader papers and now in the Herald Sun – about defenceless old ladies being bullied out of their homes by cruel and unfeeling government bureaucrats.Some of the stories are very sad.

An 85-year-old widow in Brighton East ordered to leave the Government-owned house she has lived in for more than fifty years because it is being sold. A 72-year-old Hampton woman ordered to move out because the Housing Department is selling the house she has lived in for nearly forty years.

And the Herald Sun lays it on with a trowel in the intro to today’s story: ‘Housing bureaucrats are forcing pensioners from homes they’ve lived in decades while feathering their own nests with pay rises’.

It’s a delicate issue and filled with emotion but the question has to be asked: With the demand for public housing overwhelming supply and with waiting lists that stretch for years is a Government-owned house or flat yours for life? Once you get in are you there until you die? Is the Government entitled to make you down-size when circumstances change?

June Smith in Hampton says she raised six children in her house. Marjorie Jones in Brighton raised three sons. June says the two places offered as alternatives are too small for her to have any of her ten grandchildren and five great-grandchildren to stay. Is that the taxpayers’ responsibility?

Marjorie says ‘I like my freedom, my yard and my dog ... my grandsons come and have barbecues and we have our fun. I am scared; to be told to get out, I can’t accept it.’ I understand. But is that the taxpayers’ responsibility?

Where are June’s six children and Marjorie’s family? Don’t they have some responsibility here?

The Government knows it is a sensitive issue. And it’s on a hiding to nothing.

When the plight of June Smith and Marjorie Jones was exposed in the media this week Housing Minister Richard Wynne reversed their eviction orders.

But that doesn’t answer the question: Is a big house, owned by the Government yours for life even when your family has grown and moved away and a partner has passed away? Or should you be forced to move to smaller premises and make way for other needy families?

Thursday, June 11, 2009

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009