{"id":37783,"date":"2026-03-05T05:36:39","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T18:36:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/?p=37783"},"modified":"2026-03-05T05:36:39","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T18:36:39","slug":"government-treating-public-housing-tenants-as-second-class-citizens-greens-on-ombudsman-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2026\/03\/05\/government-treating-public-housing-tenants-as-second-class-citizens-greens-on-ombudsman-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Government treating public housing tenants as second-class citizens: Greens on ombudsman report"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Shane Rattenbury, Leader of the ACT Greens:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cToday\u2019s report from the ACT Ombudsman pulls back the curtain on how public housing tenants are being treated, and it\u2019s not good enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cFor too long, serious maintenance failures have been allowed to persist while the government looks the other way instead of stepping up to meet basic responsibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt is hard to avoid the conclusion that public housing tenants are being treated as second-class citizens by this government. Urgent repairs are dragging on for months. Basic maintenance is falling through the cracks. And nothing is being done about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIf a private landlord behaved this way, they would quite rightly find themselves before ACAT. The difference is that many public housing tenants, quite fairly, don\u2019t have the time, resources or confidence to navigate&nbsp;<s>this&nbsp;<\/s>complex complaints processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe government knows this, and the result is a system where unacceptable standards are tolerated because the people affected are least able to fight back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe report outlines a shocking example of a tenant left without a proper roof for more than a year. That is not a minor oversight, it is a profound failure. It speaks to years of underinvestment and a culture that has not treated public housing with seriousness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe Greens will be scrutinising the government\u2019s response closely. What we need now isn\u2019t spin, it\u2019s a shift in attitude and investment in new and existing public homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cPublic housing is not a charity or an afterthought. It is an essential public service, and it should be delivered to the highest standard, as any Canberran has a right to expect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Shane Rattenbury, Leader of the ACT Greens: \u201cToday\u2019s report from the ACT Ombudsman pulls back the curtain on how public housing tenants are being treated, and it\u2019s not good enough. \u201cFor too long, serious maintenance failures have been allowed to persist while the government looks the other way instead of stepping up to meet basic &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2026\/03\/05\/government-treating-public-housing-tenants-as-second-class-citizens-greens-on-ombudsman-report\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Government treating public housing tenants as second-class citizens: Greens on ombudsman report&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37783"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37784,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37783\/revisions\/37784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}