Santa Teresa: NTG takes remote housing compo fight to Territory’s highest court

THE NT Government has taken its fight against a ruling ordering it to pay compensation to remote residents living in ‘uninhabitable’ housing to the Territory’s highest court

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THE NT Government has taken its fight against a ruling ordering it to pay compensation to remote residents living in “uninhabitable” housing to the Territory’s highest court.

Last year Supreme Court Justice Jenny Blokland ordered the government to pay Santa Teresa resident Enid Young more than $10,000 after finding it breached her lease agreement by leaving her without a back door for almost six years.

The ruling overturned a previous decision in the NT Civil and Administrative Tribunal which found Ms Young was only entitled to $100 in compensation and was hailed as setting a precedent for hundreds of other remote residents.

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“The assessment of whether the premises were habitable should have included not only the health and safety of tenants but an overall assessment of the humaneness, suitability and reasonable comfort of the premises, even if only basic amenities are provided, judged against contemporary standards,” Justice Blokland said.

But the government appealed the ruling and on Tuesday NT Solicitor-General

Nikolai Christrup SC told the Court of Appeal her honour had “set the bar too low” in her definition of habitability.

Mr Christrup said notions of reasonable comfort should only come into play in extreme cases, such as “if the ceiling is four foot high or a wall is missing”.

“It may be that the discomfort is so extreme that it renders the premises uninhabitable and if those comments are going to be made, it needs to be understood that it is in the context of determining the ultimate question which is: Are the premises capable of being lived in?” he said.

“That is the test — are the premises capable of being lived in — using concepts such as reasonable comfort, suitability and humaneness adds a gloss to the concept which is unnecessary.”

Mr Christrup also said Ms Young and another claimant, who has since died, had advanced “inconsistent” arguments that their tenancy agreements were invalid, while also claiming compensation for breaches of them.

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“(They) should have made an election (at NTCAT) as to which of the inconsistent claims to advance — they never did so and they’ve already taken the benefit of the compensation orders,” he said.

“(They) want to take the benefit of those orders and at the same time run an argument that there are in fact no tenancy agreements.”

The court will hand down its ruling at a date to be fixed.

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