Cuts both ways: tenants’ rights and the double-sided consequences of ‘secure tenure’ in remote Aboriginal communities

Abstract

On 7 February 2016, public housing tenants from the remote Aboriginal community of Santa Teresa in the Northern Territory commenced unprecedented legal action against the CEO of the Northern Territory Department of Housing (‘the Department’) in an attempt to address the poor state of housing in their community. In total, 70 individual tenants filed applications in the Northern Territory Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NTCAT), seeking orders under s 63 of the Residential Tenancies Act 1999 (NT) (‘the RTA’) requiring the Department, as landlord, to attend to over 600 housing repairs.1