JimmyT thinks of changing the name of this week’s episode to Hard Chat (but won’t because he’s scared of Tom Gleason) as he’s going in hard on two very different targets.
Firstly, he wants by-law breachers to either accept instant fines or face a 50 percent increase, or even more if they decide to challenge it at the Tribunal and lose. Harsh? Not harsh enough, he reckons, for people who play the system so that only the victims and people doing the right thing are the ones that suffer.
Then he thinks it’s time the state government went after the developers who set out to build crappy apartment blocks then shut down their off-the-shelf company before they have to fix the many defects left behind by their shoddy work. “Sell their homes to pay for the repairs and put them in jail – that’ll encourage the others to do the right thing.”
Finally, there’s the ruling from Queensland where a magistrates court has overurned a strata commissioner block on an Airbnb ban in a gated community. The body corporate imposed the ban, the commissioner revoked it but the magistrate overturned the ruling because he believes the government wants communities to be able to set their own rules.
And just as a side note, Jimmy takes issue with some anti-pet lobbyists who said he’s been “played” by the pro-pet campaigners last week.
Now that’s hard!