ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact

The Tarocash Mafia’s only natural predator is the Civil and Administrative Tribunal. But they don’t catch them all.

This Monday, a local leasing agent conducted his final inspection of a property after the tenants vacated over the weekend.

The property was cleaned from top to bottom at great expense to the tenant. The oven is even cleaner than the day they walked in. Rent was always paid on time. Not one noise complaint.

When Francis and Rachael Dollarhyde went on a 2-month long trip overseas, they didn’t put the place up on Airbnb because their contract stipulated they couldn’t sublet it.

According to a polite old man who works at the Civil and Administrative Tribunal, they sounded like the perfect tenants.

However, a phone call just before lunch today informed them that the apartment was in poor shape and there were many things to do before it’d be fit to be relisted on the local leasing classifieds.

“They said the carpets were ruined, paint was chipped,” said Mark.

“We’re getting nothing back.”

Mark says he’s planning on taking this matter to the Tribunal but the process is long and protracted. He said he needs to money now and this is only compounded his financial stress.

His leasing agent, Damien Cole, said his client wants to renovate his investment to increase its value. Using his tenant’s bond.

Sadly, this story is not uncommon.

That’s according to one local tenant activist, who spoke briefly to The Advocate today via telephone.

Short of going through the shire council rate ledger and dragging property owners out of their house, beating them with a length of bamboo before hanging them from a streetlight next to their leasing agent, it’s unclear how this issue of bond theft can be solved, according to Dale O’Leary from the Betoota Society of Socialists.

“Sometimes, you just need to step things up,” he said.

“Way the fuck up.”

Our reporter shrugged and remembered that because he chose to be a regional journalist in a six-horse town on the edge of the Simpson Desert, he gets to enjoy living above a pub in a bondless bedsit.

More to come.





