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Palm Island Housing Crisis

By Jeff Waters - ABC Stateline Queensland Part 1 & 2

PART 1 - Transcript
Broadcast: 30/9/2005

LISA MILLAR: But first tonight shocking poverty and overcrowding in a part of Queensland many of us would rather forget. In tropical north Queensland is a community with no industry, no agriculture, and an unemployment rate of at least 90 per cent. To make matters worse, this a poor and rarely visited town suffers an acute housing shortage. Even the shire council says the average house there shelters seventeen people. Appeals have been made for more public housing but successive state governments appear to have let matters get worse. And it's leading to a breakdown in social order. Jeff Waters took his handicam along on a visit and came back with this report.

(FOOTAGE OF CHILDREN PLAYING AND LAUGHING AT CARAVAN PARK FULL OF OLD CARAVANS)
JEFF WATERS: A formerly abandoned caravan park. This is poverty in modern Queensland.

(JEFF TALKING TO SOME OF THE RESIDENTS)
JEFF WATERS: OK can you show me where people live Tyrone?

TYRONE ROBERTS, RESIDENT: This is where we cook.

(TYRONE TAKES JEFF WATERS THROUGH A VERY RUNDOWN CARAVAN)

JEFF WATERS: Tyrone Roberts, his partner and children have been here for years.

TYRONE ROBERTS: Me and my Mrs sleep on that here this next room is where the kids sleep.

JEFF WATERS: So how many kids are there Tyrone.

TYRONE ROBERTS: Five kids.

JEFF WATERS: Five kids and they all sleep in the same room together.

TYRONE ROBERTS: Yeah.

JEFF WATERS: There's no running water, and the council threatens to cut-off the power. They've been on a housing list for five years in what must be the state's most overcrowded town.

(JEFF WATERS TALKING TO TYRONE ROBERTS AGAIN)
JEFF WATERS: Can you possibly describe to somebody from the city, who has a proper house with running water and all the mod cons, what it is like to try to bring up five kids in this environment?

TYRONE ROBERTS: Stressful and hard. Terrible. It's just really hard.

JEFF WATERS: And how do you think things will go, as the kids get older? What are you going to do?

TYRONE ROBERTS: I dunno mate. Yeah I don't know.

JEFF WATERS: When the mosquitos are bad the family huddles together in one room in the haze of burning coconut husk.

(JEFF WATERSS TALKING TO RESIDENTS)
MOTHER: To tell you the truth, on this island, it'll probably take them a good couple of years just to get anything done.

JEFF WATERS: So even if somebody said tomorrow you could have a house it would take a couple of years to get things done?

MOTHER: Probably.

JEFF WATERS: The Roberts family lives on the fringe of a community; itself on the fringe of our society. Nobody knows exactly how many people live on Palm Island. Maybe three or four thousand. But there's little doubt there's been a recent population boom. And some blame the lack of housing as the real cause of the Island's recent history of violence.

(FOOTAGE OF TROPICAL PALM ISLAND)
JEFF WATERS: Palm Island is like nowhere else. Most locals are the descendants of indigenous Queenslanders sent here for what at the time was called misbehaving. People from 30 or 40 language groups expected to live in peace. These days it might be called a detention centre, in the old parlance it's a penal colony girt by sea. Arriving home here for good by choice is community leader and former Brisbane Bronco Brad Foster. He’s on a mission now to see improvements on the island particularly housing.

BRAD FOSTER: I think we’re indigenous, I think it’s black. I think Queensland is a very backward State in relation to a number of other states in this country and I think it's just a racist attitude by our state government. I think the housing situation on Palm Island is actually very very disgraceful. I think it’s important that the State government needs to have a proper look at this community in relation to what’s going on over here.

JEFF WATERS: Brad Foster takes me to the other side of town and introduces me to Phillis Cannon and her family. Her house is not so overcrowded by Palm Island standards it has three bedrooms, and only ten regular occupants.

(BRAD FOSTER TALKS TO PHILLIS CANNON)
BRAD FOSTER: Who sleeps in this room here?

PHILLIS CANNON: My room.

BRAD FOSTER: Yeah and how many stay in your room?

PHILLIS CANNON: Me and my granddaughters.

BRAD FOSTER: You and your granddaughters, so that’s three. And who stays in that room? So there’s one adult and four kids eh.

(BRAD FOSTER CONTINUES TO TALK TO FAMILY)
BRAD FOSTER: So eight months has lapsed and there's still been no maintenance on your house.

(FOOTAGE OF HOUSE, WHICH HOUSES 17 PEOPLE)
JEFF WATERS: But the home over the back from the Cannon residence a household run by Margaret Murray is even more crowded. This four-bedroom residence houses seventeen people.

(BRAD FOSTER TALKS TO RESIDENTS)
BRAD FOSTER: So Cecile and Hazel stay in this room. Have Cecil and Hazel got any kids?

RESIDENT: Two.

BRAD FOSTER: Two kids eh. I tell you what Cecile I’m sure you’d love to have your own home eh?

CECIL: yeah.

BRAD FOSTER: How long have you been waiting for?

CECIL: Since I left the house in town. It’s two years now.

BRAD FOSTER: So you've been waiting for accommodation for over two years. There's immense overcrowding, there's a lot of maintenance issues in the housing situations where it hasn't been changed. We've got people who have been on the waiting list for five or six years even ten years. And I think at the moment the waiting list is 300 people.

ERYKA KYLE, PAL ISLAND MAYOR: Critical. Critical situation that there's been this neglect of this community as far as housing needs. The government hasn't taken it seriously over the years and therefore we're left now to solve a real problem, a serious problem.

JEFF WATERS: Palm Island Shire Mayor Eryka Kyle leads a busy life. And too much of her time is dedicated to hosing-down the sort of conflict caused by families living too close together. She says that, on average, each house on Palm shelters 17 people.

ERYKA KYLE: It has everything to do with whatever happens in this community. The overcrowding causes anger, it splits up families. There are arguments of course that come into it and it's utter chaos. And when you're angry you tend to do silly things like punching the wall. You want to punch the wall so you don't hurt someone. You want to pick up something and smash the windows.

JEFF WATERS: There is another part of town where, in better times, regular sized families were allocated houses. Here, there's as much civic-pride and as much home improvement as you'd find in any poor metropolitan suburb.

(FOOTAGE OT POLICE CITIZENS YOUTH CENTRE)
JEFF WATERS: It might be desperately short of housing, but Palm Island does have a $5M newly built, Police Citizens Youth Centre. The charred sign outside perhaps illustrates the state of the relationship between community and police. It was still school holidays when I visited. The gates were wide open but this building was building was oddly silent.

(FOOTAGE OF CHILDREN SWIMMING AND PLAYING)
JEFF WATERS: Instead of going to the PCYC the children were all doing the sorts of things children on Palm have been doing since their families were first forced to come here. It's what happens at night when these children return to their overcrowded homes that will have the biggest impact on their personal well being as well as that of their wider community.

LISA MILLAR: And next week, we'll follow-up on this story by reviewing at a state Parliamentary committee's report into Palm Island, and by asking the state government what it plans to do to relieve the housing shortage.

Palm Follow PART 2
Broadcast: 07/10/2005

KIRRIN McKECHNIE: Now to follow-up on last week's story about what appears to be a dramatic housing crisis on Palm Island. Housing Minister Robert Schwarten will join us shortly, but first Jeff Waters looks at a recent Parliamentary report into problems on the island.

JEFF WATERS: Last week, Stateline broadcast a story on what appears to be a chronic housing shortage on Palm Island. And how some say it’s the hidden cause of the community's recent history of violence. The council says each home on Palm Island houses an average of 17 people. We found a three-bedroom house with ten occupants, and a four-bedroom house with 17 people living in it.

(FOOTAGE OF STATELINE’S STORY 30TH SEPTEMBER 2005)
BRAD FOSTER: Yeah and how many stay in your room?

PHILLIS CANNON: Me and my granddaughters.

JEFF WATERS: So does the government have any plans?

PETER LAWLOR, PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Now I concede that many of those houses are crowded but there are many houses that only have one or two people living in them, and also I have to concede too it’s difficult to get an accurate number with regard to the population because people go to the mainland and come back.

JEFF WATERS: The State member for Southport, the Labor Party's Peter Lawlor, chaired a special committee on Palm Island, which recently published a 100-page report. That report made 65 recommendations to the government but only four related to housing.

PETER LAWLOR: One of the things that was pointed out to us by the council is this they wanted to be like a mainland council. Now no mainland council or no mainstream council has responsibility for the construction, allocation and maintenance of housing. So we've come up with a recommendation that we believe would see them through that difficulty by taking that responsibility from them.

JEFF WATERS: Peter Lawlor says the council does possess nearly five million dollars of unspent housing funds. The Palm Island Mayor has told Stateline she's never seen that money.

ERYKA KYLE, PALM ISLAND MAYOR: We are talking very seriously to the government who has only offered us funding for four houses. This council has stated very clearly that we want 50. We want funding for 50 homes. That's the urgency of it.

JEFF WATERS: The biggest sticking point between the council and the state government seems to be over the provision of leases. It may already be built, but the state still has no firm lease on the multi-million dollar Police Citizens Youth Centre, and it wants to build an emergency services building. In his so-called five-point plan for Palm Island, the Premier said land management issues would have to be resolved before houses could be built. But there are other matters to address as well. The Parliamentary committee report's recommendations included just one sentence referring to health issues.

PETER LAWLOR: Well health is an issue on the island but I believe that I think we've covered it quite adequately.

JEFF WATERS: And then there's the unique Palm Island sales tax. This state government owned supermarket is the only source of food on this poverty-stricken island but prices are almost 40% higher than those on the mainland. Why so expensive? Because, according to the Palm Island Parliamentary Committee, the state runs the store at a profit. An extra sales tax just for the privilege of living here. The committee recommends the store should be handed over to the community. But it also recommends a management consultant be appointed to help run the council's finances. The last time that happened, a consultant charged $25,000 a week. And the state government handed the resulting $800,000 bill to the council.

PETER LAWLOR: A financial controller we feel is needed for at least a short time. Whether it's a state government employee or a private financial controller. I don't think it really matters as long as someone gets in there and resolves the issue.

JEFF WATERS: But of course, the finances, and the land management, of Palm Island may end up being completely re-written if Canberra gets its way and convinces the state government to allow the private ownership of land. The Federal government says it could transform indigenous communities, but the Palm Island council, for one, fears mainland developers could buy-up property.

ERYKA KYLE: We're going to find ourselves trapped in a situation where we are going to be the losers. So we're in a perilous position aren't we, and I see it as a new way of grabbing land.

Source: ABC Stateline Queensland

Further information: palm island issues page - includes news index and external links

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