As you will see from other articles in this edition of the ARPQ Argus, we have over the last year or so been engaged in an intensive campaign to obtain improvements in Home Owner’s protections as currently legislated in the Manufactured Homes (Residential Parks) Act (the Act). In addition to numerous written submissions (including our ‘Issues Paper’ which was circulated to all members last year), this has involved several meetings at both official and political level, on both sides of parliament.
Although not a consistent or recurring theme, the following questions have been raised on a few occasions:
- How representative is ARPQ of Home Owners across all Residential Parks in Queensland?
- How much noise are we prepared to make to achieve the change we desire?
Good questions that we could not immediately answer, which set us thinking how best to respond.
The first question was relatively easy to answer after a simple spread sheet exercise using our membership data base.
Through both direct Individual Memberships and indirectly through Association Memberships, ARPQ currently represents in the order of 7,400 homes in Residential Parks in Queensland which equates approximately to 37% of all homes in 42% of all Parks.
This is gratifying after all the hard work we have put into building up our membership base, but raises the question how big is big enough? Any political lobbying exercise is at the end of the day all about the numbers, so the more members we have the better. Size does matter.
Consequently, can I ask all members to help us out with recruitment by recommending membership of ARPQ to their friends and neighbours? Please refer them to our current special offer on membership which is ‘join now for a low $15 and pay no more until end of September 2022’. Word of mouth works. Many thanks.
The answer to the second question about how much noise we are prepared to make, is probably more than we have in the past, and again depends somewhat on how many are making that noise.
We will be following up on this point in the very near future.
# From the Presidents Corner as printed in the ARPQ Argus March/April 2021
