A politician who complained about having to live in his car since being evicted from a rental property has been revealed to own a four-bedroom home worth $831,000.
Independent Western MP Wilson Tucker said last week that he was forced into homelessness after receiving a no-grounds eviction notice at the end of April.
But Mr Tucker did not mention that he bought a house on an 873-square metre block at Hamersley in Perth’s north last November, which he rents out for about $700 a week.
Speaking to Daily Mail last weekend, Mr Tucker said he has looked at a lot of places since he got his eviction notice, but has not been able to find a place to rent.
‘There’s certainly a lot of fear and desperation in the market. There’s literally hundreds of people showing up (to view rentals), competing over a handful of properties … it has been incredibly frustrating.’
As he represents the mining and pastoral region of Kununurra in WA’s upper house, Mr Tucker ‘decided to basically pack up and live out of my car up north’ during the weeks that parliament isn’t sitting.
He said he will stay in hotels when he needs to be in Perth, and spend the rest of the time living out of his Prado and in a tent while he goes around his electorate, which is 2,205,281 square kilometres.
‘There’s some days where it makes sense if you’re in a more remote location to pull up a tent. If I’m staying in more of a regional town like Kununurra, I’ll probably grab a motel.’
But Mr Tucker has now admitted he owns a house just 14km north-west of Perth’s CBD, but said there were tenants living there when he bought it.
‘I would feel incredibly bad if I were to make people a victim of a market which is incredibly difficult right now, and that could mean that they were out on the streets.
‘I’m more than happy to sort of respect their wishes in light of my own, given I don’t have as many dependents and am a bit nomadic at the moment,’ he told the West n.
He added that as he may not run again in the next WA election, he considered the house as an investment property that he may later move into.
The revelation did not stop Mr Tucker from slamming the state government for how it deals with renters.
‘It’s incredibly disappointing that the WA government has sided with the property industry to the detriment of the 700,000 renters,’ he said, calling for it ‘to rethink their position’ on rental protection.
‘The elephant in the room, the low hanging fruit here, is to remove no-grounds evictions and bring WA in line with the rest of the country.’
A state government spokesperson responded that, ‘With the current challenges facing WA’s rental market, it is not in the community’s interests to make it more complex to own and manage a long-term rental property.
‘Our state needs more investors in the market and uncertainty about their ability to manage their own asset may stand in the way of increasing supply.’
The WA Parliament’s disclosure rules mean that Mr Tucker does not have to declare that he bought the house until July.
Daily Mail has contacted Mr Tucker for further comment on his housing situation.