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The ACT party is calling for more powers for conger Aura to terminate tenancies. Was triggered by a recent ruling by the Tenancy Tribunal where get this, a tenant with twenty five complaints, six warnings, and police police call outs and even an alleged shooting will not have their tenancy terminated after the Tenancy Tribunal rule that insufficient evidence was provided to justify a diction, basically because all the witnesses
are too scared. There was an overhaul last year that made it easier for Conga Aora to evict tenant, but Acts ACT thinks that more is needed and at Party Housing spokesperson Cameron Luxton is with me now, good afternoon.
Yeah, good afternoon. Come, thanks for having me on on this.
Yeah good.
Look.
Is this a one off? Or are we seeing this is the tip of the iceberg or a broader problem?
But the real concern is that it isn't a one off. And I'll tell you why, because you've got right now tenants who will people in the facility, residents who are now fearful after this tendency wasn't terminated through a tendency tribunal hearing. They're now fearful of speaking up or that
they may be victims of violence. I think we have to be concerned that this is happening more often around the country because fundamentally the problem lies when if someone wishes to make a complaint against someone in their neighborhood, if they don't have access to a private situation where they can give evidence, a private testimony or hearing, well, they do expose themselves to repercussions. And that's something that
we've got to change. So, yeah, you're right, there's been some changes in what the policies of kying or order are. In fact, act campaigned and got through in the coalition government an end to the Sustaining Tendencies framework, the policy to keep people in coying lad of tendencies, whether it was we're as good or bad for the community. So
we've got an end to that. But this process has shown that kind order needs even more support, or even that the neighborhood needs more support, and that if they are fearful of repercussion, they should be able to give these testimonies so that they can be taken into account at tendency tribunal hearings.
Is it a case that I mean, ky Or has got the you know, being given the directions to be tougher on this stuff, but you've still got the tendency Tribunal. Do we need to do we need an overhaul in terms of what evidence they can consider.
Yeah, well that's what I'm That's what I'm myself as a spokesman for the act party. That is what I'm proposing right now, what I'm calling for. I think that the requirement right now that it has that kind order has to prove antisocial behavior should be including testimony from other residents in the area. And the fact that this wasn't the evidence threshold wasn't found by the tendency tribunal because no one would go on the record up and put their name and face out there for their for
their neighbors to see. Uh, And that led to the Tendancy trubunal finding is not enough evidence in this case, even though as you say, there had been more than a couple of dozen events, including the distuch charge of a firearm. I mean that just shows that we're at a point now where the Tendancy Tribunal is the bond neck not kind of order?
Well, I mean you've got the police. The evidence of police call outs is not something that's here, say, is it? I mean it's this Is this just a lousy decision by the Tennessey Tribunal or what?
Well, I hesitate to criticize.
The t you can't do that, but I can you.
Know that's yeah, well that's I mean, there's contumity there. But basically what we've got is a threshold for evidence which isn't fit for what the current situation is. And you know, people all around New Zealand have got kind of order in their communities or wanting kind of order,
wanting to do developments in the communities. Stories like this do not help social cohesion in accepting that as part of a functioning community to accept people in happily, we need to make sure that the settings are right and the tendency tribunal settings on having evidence clearly aren't right.
So this is not so much a kind of aura issue. They're the ones who are bringing the case to get rid of these tenants. This is this is a tenanty tribunal evidence evidence sort of issue, isn't it?
Well? K Like yeah, like you've said, and I've said, the kind Orders had a change in policy when the government changed and kind order is a landlord. Yeah, it's a landlord on behalf of the government, but it is a landlord, and many landlords have had issues going to the tendency tribunal. I wonder how much more widespread this actually is in the private rental market as well. This
could just be, as you say, the tiberty iceberg. But I think the real, the real issue we've got here is that a landlord, whether the government or a private need to be able to trust that when people when they rally enough people around to say, look, this is actually a problem for this tendancy and it's causing serious disruptions, or even just treating a asset like a publicly taxpayer funded house in just this sort of disregard and the
entitlement that's being shown by people to treat something like this, they need to go to the back of the housing queue. And that's what we should be at. The king Orders should be able to kick out a tenant who's doing twenty five issues that have been reported discharge of firearm. When that gets reported, someone needs to back out and they need to go to the back of the housing. So it's not good enough that we have people waiting for social housing. Well, somebody is able to do this.
So you're suggesting that King Aora should simply have more power to evict people without resort to the tenantcy tribunal or are you suggesting an overhaul of the tenants y tribunal as well, including allowing broader sort of evidence in terms of the number of anonymous complaints and police involvement in the property.
What I'm calling for, well, look, I think Coying Order has had their direction and that is the end of the Sustaining Tendencies policy and Coying Order. There should be a simple process within the bureaucracy, and I want to see a kind of order bureaucracy that's complicated where it has to go up through many layers. There needs to be a direct way to deal with tendencies quickly that are becoming antisocial for the community, because this is a
wider community issue. But what I'm calling for is to say we need to be able to have people feel like they can give testimony to the tendency tribunal in a private way that protects their anonanimity, because that is what is that issue with many people wanting to give giving evidence in this case, those people should be able to and those people giving evidence in either way, either in defense of a tenant or in saying there is antisocial behavior having a tendency, those people should be able
to do it on either side of the case in a private way. And the fact that that wasn't allowed to happen seems to be from this case a major issue from the tendency tribunal being able to make it ruling.
How can we protect witnesses in a way, because I mean also people within the neighborhood, I mean they might not want to give evidence because even if it's anonymous, you know, obviously the people in the vicinity are going to be the ones who those who are being targeted are going to think, well, it's probably them or this.
Lot, Well that's right, and even yeah, and even then if you can raise speculation across a whole lot of people, so yeah, fair enough, But there needs to be a situation where the events can actually be tabled because as we're found in this case, there was not There was found that that king order wasn't able to produce enough evidence, but there's clearly people that felt like they had a story to tell about what they've witnessed with this property that weren't able to go on the record and say it,
and therefore the Tendency Tribunal didn't take it into account and they said that the tendency can remain.
Do you think we should actually even have a I mean, when it comes to the tents Tribunal, we should actually amend the law that if there have been a certain number of complaints that can be considered, in other words, even if they haven't got the witnesses in front of them, if they've been saved. How many in this case we had twenty five complaints, six warnings, police call outs as well.
Should they be able to sort of consider the broader evidence without having to get corroborated testimony from individual witnesses.
I think you definitely want to have corroborated testimony. I think it would be a tricky thing to say, let's have a certain number of complaints, because you get you can have a gang up mentality, we've also neighbors at war or experienced it ourselves, and you don't want to have the social dynamic of a group of people who
don't particularly like a neighbors starting that up. But I think in this case we've got what seems like a very serious issue that looked like the tendency tribunal couldn't take into account because of the requirement on making and making complaints public. I think that it would be a bit of a stretch to say, let's just have a set number and as soon as you hit that number, you're out. That would be a rife for people taking
advantage of. But I think just actually in this case, having the ability of a tendency tribunal to hear evidence on behalf of residence in the neighborhood of the experience they've had and make a judgment based on that without having to make that public.
Would be Okay. We're to now then, Because it's one thing to say this is what we've changed, it's another thing to get a change cracking, and it's not seem to get it through the legislative process. This set looks like the long haul again, doesn't it? For tenants and landlords?
Yeah? What's next? I mean, on my behalf, just getting out and talking about this and making a point that this isn't something that should be accepted in our country as a as a start. But you know, Act's got the ACT Party and the coalition negotiations got things across the line, such as removing the Sustainable Tency policy. We didn't get everything across the line, like having to enabling the Tendency Tribunal to have private hearings and evidence was
another thing they didn't get across the line. But look, I'm going to talk about I'll be discussing it with my National and New Zealand First colleagues and see if we can get something moving on that.
Good on here. Okay, thanks Cameron, really appreciate your time.
I appreciate it, and thank you for more from the Weekend Collective. Listen live to News Talk ZEDB weekends from three pm, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio