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The email claimed it was “impossible to have a discussion about what is clean” with the tenants, comparing “white Australian” standards to “India and other cultures”.
A Perth agent has had her licence suspended for a period of eight months by the West Australian State Administrative Tribunal after the Commissioner for Consumer Protection said her email to former tenants contained grounds for disciplinary action.
Bronwyn Pollitt, who operated Mavin Real Estate in Perth’s inner southeast, has agreed to undertake at least three training courses that have been approved by the consumer protection body, and will work with a mentor also chosen by the watchdog for a period of three months.
The rebuke comes in response to an email that Ms Pollitt sent to a pair of former tenants after their bond was withheld in a dispute over who should pay for cleaning costs after the tenants had vacated. The tenants occupied the property for six months in 2020.
Following approximately six months of negotiation between the owner of the property and the tenants, with Ms Pollitt acting as the intermediary, the property manager sent an email telling the former residents of the property:
“I and my English family have been in Australia for generations going back to the first settlement. Our living standards, our quality of life and expectations are very different to the overcrowded, overpopulated, dirty squaller [sic] of many other countries including India therefore it is impossible to have a discussion about what is clean and when [sic] I and most Australians have an expectation of what is clean and you are talking from what you are used to.
“There is no comparison, there cannot be any discussion as you are not used to our cultural way of living.”
She expressed her view: “Hopefully the massive influx of Indian people will not turn our beautiful country into the filth that is India where bodies are on the street, half burnt bodies are in the river and people climb over each other for medical help.”
Furthermore, she made comparisons between “white Australians” and people from India, identifying herself as the former.
“A general vacate clean is usually about $1,000.00 and a white Australian has an expectation that they will move into a clean Australian standards clean [sic] not an Indian standard clean. Different if we moved to India then we would have to put up with the Indian standard.”
In a second email following a response from the former tenants, Ms Pollitt stated:
“Firstly, I apologise if you believe I have been racist against you. That was never my Intent. I compared the ingoing property condition report and photos with how the property was handed back the same as is done for every tenant.”
She asserted that the earlier message was an attempt to clarify that “due to differing views which I tried to explain in my last email and are not racist, and never intended to be racist but just the result of differences in culture and different life experiences by each party meaning that the situation is seen through differing lenses”.
Ms Pollitt’s correspondence was passed to the state’s Commissioner for Consumer Protection who pursued the matter with the State Administrative Tribunal.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Juliet Helmke
Based in Sydney, Juliet Helmke has a broad range of reporting and editorial experience across the areas of business, technology, entertainment and the arts. She was formerly Senior Editor at The New York Observer.
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