Minister Receives £7 Million Writ

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30667, 5 February 1965, Page 11

Minister Receives £7 Million Writ

(N.Z. Press Association —Copyright) SYDNEY, February 4. A £7 million writ was served this morning on a New South Wales Cabinet minister by a middle-aged spinster who lives on the veranda of a friend’s house. The writ, believed to be an Australian record, was issued out of the Supreme Court and was served on the Minister for Housing, Mr A. Landa, at his offices.

The woman, Miss Ethel May Maud Manders, gave her address in the writ, as the Y.W.C.A., Sydney, but she has been camped on the open veranda of a house in suburban Kirribilli, since January 19. The cause of the action was not specified. Miss Manders camps on the veranda wrapped in rugs, sheltered by an umbrella with boxes containing her possessions stacked around her.

A neighbour is letting Miss Manders use her stove, and is bringing her cups of tea and some meals. Miss Manders has been

sleeping on the veranda since the tenants of the home, where she was staying, moved out.

Short and grey-haired, she has had no permanent address since she left the, Greenway Flats, Kirribilli, in June, 1963. “My furniture is the main reason for wanting the Government to give me a house or flat,” she said today. “I am very sentimentally attached to it.

Miss Manders says no-one has approached her with offers of accommodation since she began her “stay-put strike.”

She says she is determined to stay on the veranda until the Housing Commission takes notice of her. Miss Manders said she decided to issue the writ for £7 million because it was “a nice round figure.” “I was really angry at the Minister, and decided to make it a really good sum,” she said.

“When I get the money I will buy things for the people who have helped me.” A Housing Commission spokesman said Miss Manders was evicted by Court order from her flat at Greenway for “unsatisfactory care of property.” The spokesman said Miss Manders’s flat was full of papers, magazines and cardboard cartons, and was a fire hazard to the building. He said the commission had offered to supply the labour to clear up the flat, but Miss Manders had refused.