Sorry everybody, I'm going to break the rule again and talk about something related to my work. It's because I'm feeling frustrated. To put it mildly. In Queensland we have a service called the Tenants' Advice and Advocacy Service (TAAS). It's a network of little services that provide advice to, and advocate on behalf of, tenants who are in dispute with their landlords. The service is funded from the interest on tenants bonds held in trust by the Residential Tenancies Authority. In the midst of their cost-cutting frenzy last year, the then Housing Minister Bruce Flegg announced that the program would be discontinued and the funds reallocated to build new public housing. Flegg and his successor Tim Mander have been unmoved by the outcry that has followed this decision. Not so the Commonwealth Government, who stepped in with interim funding to keep the services open until the end of June this year. They even offered another $2.5m to take it up to the end
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson