The Vietnam veteran has vowed to fight a Queensland council’s move to expel residents living in public parks
Between 1969 and 1971, Thomas Weir completed his national service in Vietnam as an engineer for the Australian army.
The 76-year-old is now facing another battle, against the City of Moreton Bay.
The local government voted on Wednesday to effectively ban homelessness by repealing regulations that had allowed people to set up camp in public spaces such as parks.
“It’s sad and shocking that these people feel compelled that they need to live like this,” councillor Jodie Shipway said, at Wednesday’s council meeting, to explain her vote for the change. “Their health and safety is as much at play here as is the health and safety of our community.”
But Weir, who has been homeless for nearly two years and lives in his car in Pelican Park, says he is part of the Redcliffe community and ought to be allowed to stay.
“They’re saying that we can’t stay here overnight. I mean, that’s just bullshit. When you’re homeless, where else are you going to go?”
That was a common sentiment among Redcliffe’s community of homeless residents this week, as they were informed of the change: “Where do we go?”
Weir, a former university lecturer and business owner who was sent to Vietnam after being conscripted into the Australian army, says he isn’t going anywhere. Instead he’s planning to fight.
“I’ve got a friend who’s a KC [King’s Counsel] and he said to me, ‘if your people there want assistance I would do it for you pro bono’.
“He said, ‘We will fight the council’. So I told them that today. I said, ‘expect a fight’.”
Others told the Guardian they simply have no idea what they will do from 12 March, when the law change takes effect.
Cameron Parsell, a professor with the University of Queensland’s School of Social Science, said the policy explicitly criminalised the most vulnerable in the city
“Really it’s a question about … where people can exercise their citizenship if they don’t have access to private property,” he said.
“Where can someone be a human? Where can someone be a citizen? Where can someone be free?”
Homelessness is a housing problem, caused by a near-record low rental vacancy rate, in turn caused by record-low per capita development approvals across south-east Queensland.
According to the City of Moreton Bay, there are about 137 rough sleepers registered with the Department of Housing within its local government area. The area has 4,421 people on its social housing waiting list – the longest in Queensand – and homelessness has increased about 90% in the last decade, it says.
Since December, the local government has repeatedly tightened restrictions on the group, which it calls PEH: “People Experiencing Homelessness.”
In that month it has banned living in a van or with a pet, and started issuing notices threatening a fine of between $806 and $8,065.
In February it cleared two tent cities from parks at Woody Point and Suttons Beach on the same day, also by issuing warning notices. Nobody has yet been issued a fine.
This week it made another step: repealing a local “framework” providing an exception to bans on camping in public places for homeless people. It effectively means that nobody is permitted to live in a park, even people with no alternative.
The mayor, Peter Flannery, told Wednesday’s meeting that the rule had been “exploited”.
“Our responsibility is to our ratepayers,” he said.
Councillor Adam Hain said homeless people had travelled to Moreton Bay from elsewhere because their council appeared to be a “soft touch”. He accused them of “taking the piss” and said the ban “can’t happen soon enough”.
Council staff explained that it will be enforced on a complaints basis, and residents will be given a reasonable timeframe for compliance.
Hain had advice for the homeless: move somewhere “that’s sort of a bit more out of sight, then the phone doesn’t ring”.
“It’s as simple as that; if the phone rings, we go out there.”
“The dirt and the filth that’s lying around their properties is quite disgusting, and I cannot understand how these people can live like this,” councillor Yvonne Barlow said, at Wednesday’s council meeting.
Flannery said some homeless people had been offered accommodation but turned it down due to having stairs or a poor location, or lacking bedrooms or air conditioning.
Queensland’s human rights commissioner, Scott McDougall, said the council’s move to “criminalise sleeping rough” was “deeply troubling”, and “flies in the face” of the object of the state’s Human Rights Act.
“The answer is not to impose what amounts to a blanket ban on sleeping rough on public land – which, by definition, is the only land available to people experiencing homelessness.”
A council spokesperson said the human rights commissioner was “ill-informed, and we welcome the opportunity for them to have a discussion with Council on a factual basis, as they have not contacted us to date”.
The homeless aren’t the only people asking where they’re supposed to go.
Many homeless people the Guardian spoke to on Thursday said they had never been offered accommodation by the state government’s Department of Housing, even on a temporary basis. Several said they would take any option; others require homes without stairs because of disability, or a dwelling that takes pets.
One had been put up in a motel for two days, after being moved from the local showground to make way for the show, before being sent back on to the street. Another rented a private apartment in the suburb in a panic after being issued a council notice for living in a van; he can’t afford it and will now be blacklisted from local real estate agents because he has run out of money.
Councillor Brooke Savige, one of two to oppose the change, asked council staff what would happen if the department couldn’t find a property for someone being moved on within “what we have deemed a reasonable time”.
“I think it is a difficult question to answer … it is difficult for officers to say what the Queensland government will do and how successful they will be,” a staff member said.
The council spokesperson did not answer a question as to whether it would continue to fine people even when there was no accommodation.
“Have they just got like a magic wand?” Tiffany, a homeless person from Eddie Hyland Park said.
“And how come they didn’t wave it yesterday if they’ve got one?”
Beau Haywood, the founder of local food charity Nourish Street, said the council’s new policy would force people to abandon tents and vehicles and instead live in sleeping bags, because they can be carried around and are less visible.
“How do we connect with these people now that they’re going to be hidden?”