Everyone should have a safe, secure and healthy place to call home, regardless of your postcode or bank balance. But this is not the reality for far too many people in the community.
The starting point for the critical public discussion on housing and policy outcomes should be on people – what their needs are, why that isn’t the reality for too many in the community – and from there, start talking about the solutions so that they are people-centred and for the benefit of everyone in the community.
A new report on the right to housing commissioned by the Human Rights Law Centre and authored by Professor Jessie Hohmann from the UTS Faculty of Law, helps shifts the focus of discussion to people.
In this session, Cassandra Goldie, Professor Jessie Hohmann, Tania Thompson, Caitlin Reiger and Amy Persson (moderator) discuss the report and the difference an Australian Human Rights Act can make by placing the right to housing at the heart of government laws, policies and services.
AMY PERSSON: Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us at today's event, those of you here at UTS and all of those joining us online. My name is Amy Persson and I'm the Pro Vice-Chancellor of Social Justice & Inclusion here at UTS.
I want to start by acknowledging that for those of us in Australia we are all on the traditional lands of First Nations peoples. This land was never ceded. I want to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, upon whose lands the UTS campus stands. I pay respect to Elders past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of this place. I also want to acknowledge that of course any discussion about the right to housing must recognise the specific needs and context of First Nations peoples in this country and reaffirm their sovereignty.
It is my pleasure to be co-hosting today's event with the Human Rights Law Centre and we're joined by an incredible group of speakers: Cassandra Goldie, Professor Jessie Hohmann, Tania Thompson, and Caitlin Reiger, who I'll introduce properly in just a moment.
If you have any questions during today's event, please submit them to us via Slido. There is a link and a QR code on the screen here and we'll share that with everyone who's online. Using Slido means we can see the questions coming in from both in-person and online audience members and you can upvote the ones you most want asked. We of course ask you to please keep the questions relevant for the topic at hand today.
For those of us here, there's a photographer in the room. If that is a concern and you don't want your photograph taken, please just let that person know or one of the event team know and that's totally okay.
I want to open today's discussion by reading directly from the report authored by Professor Hohmann, commissioned by the Human Rights Law Centre. She writes: "Housing provides and protects some of our most fundamental human needs. Adequate housing shields us from the elements and from external threats and pressures. It gives us a base from which we can take part in the life of the community, and from where we can build a livelihood, take part in education, and contribute to society. Housing also provides a space where the private aspects of our lives are fostered and supported. The way people are housed reflects a social and political agreement about what standards of living, levels of inequality and social exclusion we tolerate or condone. Thus, housing provides not just material shelter, but helps set physical boundaries of belonging and community."
At the heart of this, I think, is people. The right to housing is about all of us no matter our circumstances, being able to fulfil our potential and to be fully human.
So that's a starting point for today's discussion and we've got some excellent and incredibly knowledgeable people gathered to discuss the impact it will make on our society if a right to housing was realised and the changes that might be made to our laws, policies and government services.
It is my pleasure to now introduce our speakers. Our first speaker is Professor Jessie Hohmann, who joined the UTS Faculty of Law as Associate Professor in 2019. She is an internationally recognised expert on the right to housing. Her research also engages with the material culture, objects and materiality of international law and with Indigenous peoples and international law.
Next, we have Cassandra Goldie. Cassandra is the CEO of the Australian Council of Social Service and Adjunct Professor with UNSW Sydney. Prior to joining ACOSS, Cassandra held senior roles in both the not-for-profit and public sectors and in 2023 she was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia for distinguished services to social justice through leadership and advocacy, promoting the rights of marginalised and disadvantaged people.
Next, we have Tania Thompson. Tania is a community leader, social housing resident activist and senior rights activist. Moving to Sydney from Aotearoa (New Zealand) as a teenager, Tania was instrumental in creating the Social Housing Women's Forum that promoted women's health services and legal advice, as well as instigating programs during COVID targeted at social isolation amongst seniors. Most recently Tania has been involved in a partnership with Glebe Youth Service targeting food insecurity by providing food hampers and teaching cooking classes.
Our final speaker is Caitlin Reiger. Caitlin is the CEO of the Human Rights Law Centre and a human rights lawyer. She has spent the past 25 years working globally on transitional justice for mass human rights violations, international criminal law, and justice system reform. Since returning to Australia, Caitlin supported the First Peoples' Assembly of Victoria in the design and establishment of the Yoorrook Justice Commission. Please make our esteemed panellists welcome.
This is the best part of my job to get to ask these very interesting people questions. I'm going to start with Jessie, the author of the report that we're launching today. Jessie, can you summarise what your right to housing in Australia report finds and perhaps also give us a brief overview of what a right to housing is not?
PROF. JESSIE HOHMANN: Thanks so much. Thank you for the question and it is daunting to summarise such a 10,000 words, I think, in a few minutes, but let me give it a shot.
So, at the heart a right to housing is a place to live somewhere in peace, dignity and security and even more specifically, it's the right to have access to a place to live in peace, dignity and security. So, to jump straight to what the right is not, there are a lot of misperceptions and myths around the right to housing and I think the most common myth is that it will end up being a right for where you can go and knock on the Government's door and say, "Give me a house" and demand a house. It's actually not a right to demand a house from the state. It's much more nuanced and sophisticated. It aims to change the legal and policy landscape so that everyone can access that place to live in peace, dignity and security.
So, in order to understand how we would do that or what we would do to make that happen, we can think about the right to housing as being made of seven elements. So, if you can identify each of the seven elements and check off that each one is present to an adequate level, then the right to housing is ensured. These include elements such as accessibility for vulnerable or disadvantaged groups, affordability of housing such that your housing costs won't compromise other basic needs, security of tenure so that you are securing your home and can't be moved on or moved out at any point, that your house will be meeting basis standards of habitability, that it will be in an adequate location, not cut off from schools or work opportunities, that it will be culturally adequate.
So, Australia already has obligations for the right to housing. In the 1970s, Australia ratified an international treaty that includes the right to housing and therefore it took on obligations for that right and it uses those obligations to ground its powers for housing. So, the Federal Government uses this treaty, it says we have powers under this treaty to make housing policy and to act in the housing sphere, but on the other hand, it hasn't brought those rights into Australian domestic law so that we can claim them before a court or hold the Government to account for them. So, it empowers itself through this international law but hasn’t made it possible for Australians to actually hold it to account or use that right for accessing housing.
So, the most important aspect I think to a right to housing is, as we've already talked about, putting the human being at the centre. You won't be surprised, you will hear in the audience today you won't be surprised by the depth and the breadth of the housing crisis in Australia. We know housing is increasingly insecure for many, that homelessness numbers are growing and that inequality is growing.
For too long, we have tried to navigate Australian housing policy without turning our minds to the right to housing as an appropriate response. And actually, I think that we cannot keep going as we are. Instead, the right to housing provides a really, really powerful new way to think about housing and to think about each person's right to a place to live in peace, dignity and security, a kind of overlay that we could lie over all of Australian policy and ask whether it is moving towards the right housing or away from it. So in the report, I've covered five key ways that the right will make a difference to Australia in the housing sphere and of people's lives in Australia. The first is that it does provide that really clear set of check marks, each of those seven elements. And if you can just check that your policy is increasing affordability, increasing accessibility for vulnerable or marginalized groups, making housing more habitable, making sure that it is culturally adequate, then you are going to be able to check whether your policy is a good policy in human rights terms.
The second way that the right to housing can make an important difference is in recognizing that those who are experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity are not passive welfare recipients or charity cases, but rights holders entitled to dignity and to an equal access to housing. They have agency and as a matter of right are entitled to adequate housing. I think that shifts the frame in a really important way and in a way that's been missing from the Australian debate for a long time.
Third, it's so important to see the right as a foundation for other human rights. So without access to adequate housing, our educational outcomes are much worse, our health outcomes are much worse. Our family and private life is diminished. All of those other rights that we think are so important, if you don't have secure and adequate housing, then you can't exercise those rights. So, it's a foundation for the realization of numerous other human rights.
Fourth, and it might come as a surprise, because one of the criticisms of rights like the right to housing is that they are very expensive and governments just can't afford to comply with them. Research is now showing that it can be really cost effective to ensure the right housing. So some research coming out of Wales in the UK has shown that over the same time period it would cost only half as much to ensure adequate housing in terms of the right to housing than it would cost to pay for health impacts, the front line services, the cost of the criminal justice system, the poor educational outcomes and the loss of productivity that go with living in inadequate or insecure housing. So, it really breaks that myth that the right to housing is too expensive and we can't afford it.
Finally, and I think importantly, in a democracy if you're going to have a right, you should be able to hold the Government to account for it. We have this right in international law, but the Government has not made it possible in any way to hold them to account for it and ultimately, if you have a right, you should have a remedy for it and an opportunity to hold the Government to account.
AMY PERSSON: Can I just ask a follow up around our international obligations and the Federal Government not having enacted those in domestic law. They've done that for other things, haven't they? Can you talk just briefly about the other ways they've done that? I guess I'm getting to this is not some crazy ask. We do this in Australia.
PROF. JESSIE HOHMANN: Absolutely. So, the prime example is really the International Covenant on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which has been brought into Australian law as the Racial Discrimination Act and so therefore you can approach an Australian court and say, "I have been subjected to discrimination on the basis of my race”, and you can have that resolved in Australia. So yes, and that was done in the 1970s as well. So, it's absolutely not it’s not something that has never been tried before. It's a tried and tested technique.
AMY PERSSON: There's precedent, which is one of the main terms I've actually kept from my law degree, for those of you studying the law. Yes. Cassandra, ACOSS is a very strong advocate for our housing system where low income Australians have access to safe and secure and affordable housing. Can you talk to us a bit about the main policy asks from ACOSS in that space?
CASSANDRA GOLDIE: Thanks, and just acknowledging I'm on First Nations land and pay respects to Elders past and present, to acknowledge any First Nations colleagues who are joining us today and to particularly acknowledge the extraordinary leadership of the First Nations groups involved on this really critical issue of the right to adequate housing. ACOSS does collaborate and support and try to amplify the voice of many people who are working very hard on trying to deliver decent, secure housing for everybody in Australia and colleagues who are in the room here today from Community Housing Industry Association, National Shelter, Homelessness Australia and many grassroots organisations all over Australia every day are trying to breathe life into the vision that Jessie so beautifully laid out again in asserting that housing is indeed a human right.
ACOSS, we do spend a lot of time with people who are very directly affected by this issue, and there is absolutely no question that when your modest housing is threatened, what it means to your sense of self and dignity. What it means to be put into public housing when you've got absolutely nothing behind you and get told that you've got to put the window coverings and pay for them yourself. And so you end up with sheets covering your windows when you finally get into something that might be vaguely affordable for you. And it means a lot for people who watch every day the way in which our housing system for far too many people has become a way to make more money, to allow property investors to be at the front of the queue because of the regenerative tax arrangements that we have that mean that housing as an asset class is not a bad investment, particularly if you can keep the price going upwards.
So certainly our view is that the housing crisis is now on everybody's lips, has been a long burn in Australia for a number of decades and everybody who can remember, they go back to remember when, if you had sort of reasonable income, modest income, you might have a chance of getting into a secure form of housing and for far too many people now you don't.
The policy solutions, there are a number of them and there is a lot of consensus about what needs to be done. We've allowed an underinvestment in low-income housing, public housing, social housing, community housing. This current Government has now created some important vehicles like, it’s called the half. It's a way for us to start to finally put investment into the growth in social and affordable housing so we can get to what we believe is needed, which is overall 1 in 10 properties are actually affordable for people on low incomes because right now if you're on JobSeeker, there is literally no area in the private rental market which is affordable for you. JobSeeker is just $56 per day. So, a big boost, we need at least about we estimate about $55,000 per year needs to be expanded in terms of supply.
Supply is one part of it. The second is the adequacy of incomes. We do continue to highlight the importance of social security, which has been falling behind in its adequacy, so affordability is two parts, isn't it, the price and how much money you've got. So, a proper adequate increase to JobSeeker and Commonwealth Rent Assistance, particularly for people on low incomes, is also really key.
We talk about cultural adequacy and I think that's a really, really important missing part of the dominant discussion about housing. I want to again really acknowledge and urge all of you to look at the really excellent work that's being done by the First Nations housing industry alliance that is working very hard to bring through to government what is needed around a community-controlled housing sector in Australia that does actually build generally culturally appropriate housing. That's really key tex.
We need to continue to call out the way in which negative gearing and capital gains discount, the design of stamp duty and land tax is helping to fuel upward pressure on prices, which comes to the question about affordability for the country. Most of what I've just described would require billions in investment and so it should.
Let's remember last year we spent as a country about $20 billion per year in providing income tax cuts, a lot of which went to very wealthy people in Australia, and if we even modestly reduced the egregiously generous tax concessions associated which is benefiting property investors, speculative property investors, we would help to generate the billions that we need to continually invest in the growth of social and affordable housing stock.
I might just finally flag security of tenure. It's one of the actually, I was just talking to somebody about I first started work in community legal centres and legal aid and that's what I was working on, which was trying to stop no cause evictions in this country. It is an absolute disgrace that it continues to happen in a number of jurisdictions because, from a human rights point of view, whilst there's a progressive obligation to deliver supply of adequate housing, there is an immediate obligation to protect people from forced evictions and to make sure that people are not being evicted into homelessness and we could deliver that through proper legislation and there are many models that have been done overseas. There's been some progress, but nowhere near enough.
And minimum standards so that it's not too hot for you to live in, that would be good too in terms of liveability, all of which active policies we're working on right now.
AMY PERSSON: Yes, and I think that point, particularly about no forced evictions, I mean, it just exists in so many other countries very successfully and has a huge impact on people's sense of safety and security. It's one of those I think almost vexed public policy questions where when you've been involved in housing policy and debates over a number of years, you just think come on, let's just do this. It really makes so much sense, and there is movement. There's movement in New South Wales, isn't there?
CASSANDRA GOLDIE: There is, but, you know, it still is seen as something to manage in terms of the interest with, you know, the very powerful vested interests that are associated with the churn of housing stock. I mean, one of the things that doesn't get, I don't think, enough attention is, to your point, Jessie, about the other human rights that are attached to secure housing in terms of being able to keep your children in a school. You know, the number of parents that have to move their children year after year because they keep getting evicted because the land's owner wants to buy and sell to make a bit of money and no factoring in of the consequences on those children having to be taken out of school again and moved somewhere else where they might be able to find a place to live.
So, it is very serious. An eviction is not just an administrative act. It's a really serious human rights act and it engages the right to adequate housing and there's nowhere near enough scrutiny of what happens when somebody is evicted and no obligation on the State Government to turn up and say what is going to happen to this family before this eviction is allowed to go ahead, because often actually now it's in the hands of homelessness services, who are really unable to find anywhere affordable for those families to live and so they are in cars, we know it, they're in parks and they're all over the country in regional Australia in that sort of situation at the moment.
AMY PERSSON: Thanks, Cassandra. Tania, over to you. Talk to us about the role local communities can play, I think, in this debate and in advocating their needs and I think all of us would be interested in your experience of that community advocacy.
TANIA THOMPSON: I suppose I should start so that people understand where I came from. So, my housing insecurities probably started around 10 years ago, where my life changed medically, I came from domestic violence, so there were many things on board that I had. I became homeless. I was couch surfing.
Being an older woman that used to be very confident and used to move very positively through community, I had a job, I had money, I didn't worry about anything, but when that actually happened and when I became homeless, I didn't know where to turn. I didn't know who to talk to and when I did start talking to people, I didn't feel like I was being heard in a lot of ways.
So, I did this for about five years couch surfing, being homeless. I have children, but I didn't put that pressure on my children. It was not for them. It was my journey.
So I put my name down for every type of housing that you could possibly think of and was hoping that someone would hear me and would pay attention to my needs because you only want to tell so much because sharing that experience, you feel that that could show weakness in many different ways and I didn't want to do that.
So, my medical issues started to increase and change very rapidly and I started to get a bit noisy because I started to get a bit frustrated with what was happening and it was just this fire that started inside me. So I started like really pumping out applications, knocking on doors, and for me I was lucky enough that community housing picked me up, Bridge Housing, and when I got that call, I was like there was excitement, there was fear because I didn't know where I was going because you hear about housing, you see housing and it's not very attractive to look at as a woman and coming from domestic violence because we look for safety, we look where we can be safe and the security of that.
So that's sort of, I won't go into too much about that, but that's where my journey began. So, I was housed in community housing six and a half just over six and a half years ago. I stayed in my unit for about six months, and I did not talk to anyone. I didn't want to talk to anyone even though everyone said hello to me, and I wanted to say hello back, but I just couldn't.
Anyway, after meeting some of my neighbours, who were elderly, who I love, I love elderly people, and they actually broke down a lot of my barriers. Just having conversations with them about all different things, they just opened up so much to me about their needs and wants and what they could have and what they had experienced.
So, I suppose that started my journey in wanting to speak up for them because I knew I could. I knew I could actually do that for them and be their voice. So advocating then started, little things, little steps with the elderly to break down those barriers with community housing so that with Bridge Housing to change different things to help these residents.
So basically living and advocating in the Elger Street Housing Group of close to 173 tenants, thereabouts, give or take, 60% being women and average age around 66 they would be. We have many diversities in this community, so many, which are made up of a mix of First Nations residents, people living with disabilities, people coming from domestic violence and many levels of mental health, and also a very large group of nationalities which we have. So, there's a huge a big rainbow of people, a mixing pot really of interesting individuals.
Some of these individuals had been escaping the violence, but also homelessness possibly where they'd been sleeping rough for many, many years, which I understood. I actually understood that. They come from transitional housing where drugs and so forth, substances were involved, so they were looking for an out to a better life, and then people started looking towards me for a voice or to help them find their voice, to speak up and step up.
The impact that it probably had on them that I heard was that they were getting their experience of rejection of everything. Every word that they said they felt that they were not being heard, they were being rejected and they were shutting down. By offering them and encouraging them to participate in anything that I was trying to bring forward to them, like, you know, the Golden Oldies project to allow them to speak up and be part of something that others were the same and we valued what they had to say and what they were feeling. So sorry.
AMY PERSSON: No, I think that's awesome. Can you tell us a little bit about whether there's support for you to play that role in your community because it sounds to me like that community is extremely lucky to have you and I think we all you know, and we're a university on your doorstep, right, and I know we work closely with you, but I think we need to make sure people like you have support to influence and feed into these debates and discussions.
TANIA THOMPSON:
100%. And I think having the support, my supports come from, firstly, I will always, my first step is always going to the housing provider. What do you have to offer?
These are the issues that we are having down here, can you offer something, can you play a role in actually helping our residents?"
Now, most of the time they will try to do that, but then, you know, it may not fit into what is happening. They have a great community team, and they have a great housing support team that try to work very closely with all the residents that they have, but sometimes, you know, with the complexities of some of our residents, that can be really hard.
So, it's like breaking it down, bringing for me I housing can't step up for that, and it's not stepping up, but if they don't have what we need, I will always reach out to other organisations just to make them feel more comfortable, which I did with the Women's Forum. Women were shouting, "We need more, we need more information, I don't know where to go."
I brought Seniors Rights in that sat down and had a conversation with them and I had a full room. It was like I didn’t you know, at first 30 people maybe. My room was standing only left and it was I looked in the room and it was the elderly, there was organisations, so people wanted to hear what was going on with our people.
So, it's encouraging all organisations to play their part, to pay attention because it's not just shelter that they're looking for. Shelter is important, but it's all the other things that come with that once we're inside that shelter to assist because we can't just put people in a place and forget them because they just come with so much and they just want peace, safety and someone to listen.
AMY PERSSON: Thank you. Caitlin, I want to bring you into the discussion. The Human Rights Law Centre has been coordinating a campaign for an Australian Human Rights Act. Can you talk to us about the difference a Human Rights Act could make in this context?
CAITLIN REIGER: Yes, absolutely. Thank you. And thanks, Tania, for bringing to life for everybody as well what this means at a very personal level and the destabilising impact that that uncertainty has and really this is what this conversation is about. You know, Jessie, you highlight it really clearly in the report, this is about everybody having the basic, equal ability to live in safety, in dignity and in a place that enables them to live their full life with their health, with their kids' education, their ability to go to work. So, it's very foundational things that we're talking about and these are really minimum standards.
So, when we talk about why do we need a Human Rights Act, because these are the foundational elements that make us a better and fairer society. Australia is one of the only places, certainly one of the only liberal democracies in the world without this level of basic legal protection. It's the missing piece in our legal framework, and the challenge with thinking about housing is that, as we've heard, you can't separate your right to housing from your ability to live, you know, with your health and your access to your kids' education and all these things all are deeply interconnected. You don't get to pick and choose which human rights people get to enjoy. They are interconnected and they are mutually reinforcing.
So, a Human Rights Act would provide that overarching framework. We heard earlier that Australia's international obligations in some areas of human rights have had some implementation, but it means we have this very messy patchwork of antidiscrimination law for certain characteristics but not others, but that doesn't help with helping a decision maker think about the full array of human rights that are likely to be at play in making a policy decision or an administrative decision and it's really thinking about well, what impact who is going to be affected and what impact will it have on that person's everyday life.
So, a Human Rights Act is the framework and the set of rules. It helps everyone from the public to decision makers and certainly when new laws are coming into effect and being designed, it makes the obligation clear that you've got to think about these things. These are not just optional policy choices. They're actually existing legal obligations under international law and they're foundational requirements to make our society fairer.
We know that Human Rights Acts are already making a difference in relation to housing rights more broadly. In three jurisdictions in Australia, in the ACT, Queensland and in Victoria, there is some form of human rights legislation in place. None of them explicitly contain the right to housing, but even so, because housing is so connected to these other things, people have been able to use that legislation to hold decision makers, hold governments to account and get really practical solutions that make a difference to being able to live with more dignity, with more safety.
There's examples in Queensland where Tennis Queensland was able to support a woman who'd been surviving family violence who was faced with an eviction order from her social housing and the eviction was partly because of damage and actions taken by her former partner and so using the Human Rights Act was a way of getting the relevant authority to take that into account, ultimately solve the case by transferring the lease to her you know, really practical things that show the interconnectedness and how powerless people can feel when those considerations are not taken into effect.
We also know in Victoria there was another case where a man who had been in mental health a mental health facility against his will was the care team had decided that for his long-term support it would be better if he went into a particular housing facility, but because he owned his own house, he wasn't eligible. So, then there was an application for guardianship orders to take the decision away from him so that his house could be sold so that he could be put into this housing.
Ultimately the Victorian Charter of Human Rights was able to be used then. It wasn't a right to housing per se, it was a right to protection from arbitrary interference with your privacy and effectively your home and that was a way in which they were able to prevent his house being sold, ultimately him going back to his home where he lived for a further decade as he got older and as an older person with mental health issues, he would actually he would have been even more vulnerable if he'd ended up in housing arrangements that were provided.
So these are not just kind of legal conceptual discussions, they make really practical differences for people's lives, but at the moment that depends on where you live and if you're not in one of the jurisdictions that's got that legal protection, too bad, which is not how I think most Australians want our society to operate, that it shouldn't be dependent on where you live that you get that level of legal protection. So a Human Rights Act is something that would actually bring everybody under the same level of protection and it's something that has now been formally recommended by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights last year, which is a joint committee of both houses of Parliament that has clearly recommended that there needs to be a Federal Human Rights Act that includes all of these rights together and that puts that obligation onto decision makers to think about this at the earliest stages so that we're preventing violations, at the same time we're giving people a clear pathway to take action when they need to in the event that their rights are violated.
AMY PERSSON: And presumably, just like no cause evictions, there are other countries that have successfully managed to put in place Human Rights Acts and legislation. Can you and Jessie talk about any of those briefly in relation to housing?
CAITLIN REIGER: I mean, as I said, most other places do already have this kind of protection in place. Probably I think one of the most well known examples is in South Africa, where the post-apartheid constitution in fact enshrined the right to housing and there's been extensive high level litigation about what that means and the extent of those obligations.
But we were talking before the panel around the UK's experience as well, where there's a very, very different model than in Australia and there is a Human Rights Act in the UK and I think part of that is bringing in sort of the awareness and the understanding that basic rights need to be taken into account and so you're starting with a very different operating model at the outset.
PROF. JESSIE HOHMANN: Yes, the UK is a really interesting example because although it is quite different from Australia in many ways, it does I think what's really common to both is that the change that we need to see so I was based in the UK for a long time, for 13 years before I came back to Australia in 2019 and when I arrived in the UK, there was virtually no discussion about the right to housing and it was just the really ground level work of people like Tania, your compatriots in the UK, people across the spectrum who were really just working at that ground level grassroots to change the debate and that really has shifted and there were some really significant changes and particularly in Scotland, where they have since decided to incorporate the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which is where we have the right to housing and other economic and social rights like the right to social security, the right to work, into Scottish law in the same way that we have incorporated the convention on racial discrimination, yes. So, it can be done.
Canada has taken a different approach. So recently, in the last couple of years, Canada put the right to housing at the centre of its national housing strategy, so rather than changing its constitution to include a right to housing, it put the right into the strategy, and it's made that the central piece of that puzzle.
So, there are a lot of different ways that you've got around this. There are more than 50 constitutions across the world that include a right to housing and then examples like Canada, where the right is included as a central piece of policy, but not in the constitution. So, in all of these examples we can see different pathways to realise the right.
AMY PERSSON: I'm going to bring in some audience questions. It's interesting you mentioned Scotland because one of our audience members gave a shoutout to the Scottish example, so thank you for covering that. I've also got a question about whether a right to adequate housing could be enshrined in the Australian Constitution. Do you want to briefly comment on that and perhaps why the campaign is around a Human Rights Act versus changing the Constitution?
PROF. JESSIE HOHMANN: Yes, and others may want to come in on this as well. So, the proposal from the parliamentary committee is for a Human Rights Act at the federal level and the reason for that I think you're probably better placed to speak about, but I do think it's really important to point out that there isn't actually any legal reason why Australia could not have a constitutional right to housing.
So, there's often a kind of discussion that there's something particular about Australia's Constitution that prevents us from having human rights as constitutional rights and that is not, in my view, correct in any way. There is no legal bar to a constitutional right. However, the strategy might be a different case, I think, so changing the Constitution in Australia strategically, politically is very difficult and it may be easier and there may be also positive reasons for a Human Rights Act.
One of the things that tends to happen with constitutional rights is they can become very entrenched and they can become very outdated and so a Human Rights Act as legislation can be a more agile response to changing societal views of human rights and that can be a positive reason, rather than to think of not going for constitutional change as somehow the weaker option.
CAITLIN REIGER: Yes, I guess maybe just to add that, you know, the recommendation is for a legislative approach rather than changing the Constitution and as we know from the most recent referendum, it's not easy to change Australia's constitution and there's not really any significant reason why a legislated Human Rights Act wouldn't provide the practical benefits that people need. We've seen that in the jurisdictions that I mentioned in terms of the ACT, Queensland and Victoria.
But similarly in the UK, in New Zealand, in other jurisdictions where there's legislated Human Rights Acts, you know, one of the arguments is, well, subsequent governments can change them, but in fact most of those Human Rights Acts, they have survived changes in government. In Victoria they've survived those changes in government, and they've become part of the legal furniture, and the people know where they can go and it does still provide the practical benefit.
So I think while we can hold up constitutional changes as a high standard, it's not the only way and there's certain political reasons as well in Australia just in terms of our traditions where there is a focus on parliamentary sovereignty and so I think the recommendation for a Human Rights Act that the parliamentary joint committee has proposed, which is pretty much in line with what the Australian Human Rights Commission has also recommended, it's also in line with the campaign that we at the Human Rights Law Centre and nearly 130 other community organisations have got behind is saying look, here's an easy path for it, it's not a complicated thing to bring in and it will make a huge difference to people.
CASSANDRA GOLDIE: I do think it's healthy to remind us, though, of why when the Australian Constitution was formed we didn't get any human rights protections much. Often it does get talked about as somehow, we had great insight, that somehow parliamentary scrutiny would deliver better. The historical records tell a very different story and (indistinct) and others have done excellent documentation of this.
So it's good to remember that the primary reason that the founding fathers determined that it wasn't appropriate for Australia to have human rights in the Constitution was because at that time Western Australia and Queensland Governments had banned people from China from holding mining licences on the grounds of their race and they wanted to protect the right to overtly discriminate to prevent people on the grounds of their race from doing something and so that was effectively defeated in terms of the move. It was happening around other parts of the world to get human rights protections into constitutions and as I shared with many people as I was one amongst many others trying to secure the support for the Voice last year, reminding people that the first law that went through the Australian Parliament was the White Australia Policy.
So, I think it is important for us to remember that constitutional laws do matter. Here we are in 2024 and so ACOSS, amongst many others, continue to say at a minimum we should be having a Human Rights Act with a maximum scrutiny as we continue to advocate, for example, with national cabinet that has looked a number of times now at the housing crisis in Australia and continues to say that the Federal Government can't touch tenancy laws. Well, actually if you looked at the power under the International Covenant on Economic and Social Rights, as Jessie's report makes very clear, if our national government wanted to, wanted to, they would have the basis for legislating uniform protections about forced evictions on the basis of it being an international obligation that they were fulfilling domestically.
So, I think it's healthy to understand the history, but also to recognise that, you know, sadly, as we saw last year, constitutional change is very, very hard.
AMY PERSSON: I've got a question from the audience about the increasing homelessness amongst seniors and asking whether we're adequately addressing that issue, and I wanted to start with you, Tania. You reflected on becoming homeless later in life and you also have been incredibly involved in activism with seniors in your community. Can you talk to us briefly about that work and perhaps reflect on why that crisis is worsening and what policymakers need to think about in terms of our seniors?
TANIA THOMPSON: I think at the moment like it is, the increasing numbers of aged that are becoming homeless has skyrocketed to the point where I constantly see people, women mainly, I see a lot of women out there that roam the streets and they roam 24/7 every day of the week and I don't think the statistics of these people are actually being seen because a lot of these people are actually they've become invisible to community, to greater community, and they don't say anything. This is the thing, they're not communicating with organisations because they're embarrassed and they don't feel like people are hearing them. Policies mean nothing to them. Organisations, they seek help from organisations.
But how do we fix it? I don't know except for walking the beat every day, talking to them, trying to direct them in the right direction, which sometimes I've done and I've taken the hands of some of those people and taken them to places just to have a conversation and feel like they're not being judged because a lot of them feel very judged, like you know, I don't understand, these are the people that paved the way for all of us. They're the ones who started making the bricks to make a lot of these homes, and so forth.
It's incredibly, you know, emotional for myself to watch this and I'm constantly trying to do my part by putting my word across to organisations, housing groups and so forth, but just helping people advocate for themselves and finding that place, but they're just they're lost. They're invisible to most people and I think that's a shame in a lot of ways.
AMY PERSSON: I just go back to something I quoted from your report right at the beginning of this session. You know, the way people are housed reflects the social and political agreement about what we as a nation tolerate and there is something, I think, quite emotional about this extraordinary rise in the homelessness amongst women, you know, over 50, over 55, by and large women who are often the backbone of communities all around this country. There is something really quite shocking. Cassandra, did you want to jump in briefly on the cause and ACOSS's view on what's happening there and what we can do?
CASSANDRA GOLDIE: Well, I think and there's been some really great research that's just been released in Parliament last week by Homelessness Australia and a number of national housing peaks, social research which has shown that for those that are looking for, you know, direction of hope here, but probably a decade ago most people because we are overall a very wealthy country, most people thought that if I am in this situation, it's probably my fault one way or the other, you know, I don't have a decent job. If you remember a previous Treasurer, Mr Hockey, you might recall he said, "Well, if you've got a problem with housing, you need to just get a better job and get paid more, it's your fault."
Fast forward to today and the social research is very clear that now the majority of the community understand that this crisis has been caused by effectively policy government decisions and that governments hold many of the solutions and that is progress because there is no question that there are very clear and deliberate policy changes that were made which groups at the time, including ACOSS, warned would fuel this housing crisis.
So, doubling of capital gains discount, the tax change that was done around 2000 absolutely fuelled speculative property investors into the market. I want to be very clear; we don't have an opposition to investment in good housing. We want to see good investors in the market to create more long term, stable, decent housing, but we don't want property speculators in there who are looking to churn housing over and over to make a quick capital gain out of it. That was entirely predictable that that is what it would do to the housing market and the damage that has been done, we're seeing the consequences of that today.
And I think, Tania, when you talk about the feelings, the emotional what's attached to this, that thing about shame, the more that we continue to have people prepared to speak up and share the story and the shared experience of this, then we build the coalition which is majority of people who either are absolutely destitute and living in tents and in cars, through to people who managed just to get in because they were desperate to get some security of tenure, they felt the only way they could get that was to buy something and they are now in debt that they cannot cope with as the interest rates start to go up, which again was entirely predictable.
So what I do see is this is on the front page now, there is an expectation that national governments will move, and I do think that this advocacy this evening and in Parliament and around the country to say housing is absolutely a human right and that we need to see anything that's built as will it provide decent long term, stable housing for people, rather than can I make a quick dollar and get in and out of the market?
AMY PERSSON: Thank you so much. I'm going to finish up there. If you would like to support the campaign for an Australian Human Rights Act, there's plenty of information at the Human Rights Law Centre. Congratulations, Jessie, on a fantastic contribution and can everyone please thank our panellists, Jessie, Cassandra, Tania and Caitlin (Applause).
Last but not least, the recording of the event will be sent to everyone who registered in the coming days, including with links to some of the resources mentioned here. Thanks so much and thanks to all of you online.
This event was hosted by the UTS Faculty of Law, Centre for Social Justice & Inclusion and the Human Rights Law Centre. If you are interested in hearing about future events, please contact events.socialjustice@uts.edu.au.
It’s important to see the right to housing as a foundation for other human rights. Without access to adequate housing, our educational and health outcomes are much worse and our family and private life is diminished – it's a foundation for the realisation of numerous other human rights. – Professor Jessie Hohmann
There's nowhere near enough scrutiny of what happens when somebody is evicted. There’s no obligation for the State Government to turn up and say what is going to happen to this family before the eviction is allowed to go ahead. Often, it's in the hands of homelessness services who are unable to find anywhere affordable for those families to live - so they are in cars, parks and they're all over the country in regional Australia in that situation. – Cassandra Goldie
It’s encouraging organisations play their part and pay attention because it’s not just shelter that [people experiencing homelessness] are looking for. Shelter is important but it’s the things that come once we’re inside that shelter... peace, safety, and someone to listen – Tania Thompson
We know that Human Rights Acts are already making a difference in relation to housing rights more broadly. In the ACT, Queensland and in Victoria, there are some form of human rights legislation in place. None of them explicitly contain the right to housing but because housing is so connected to other things, people have been able to use that legislation to hold decision makers and governments to account and get practical solutions that make a difference to being able to live with more dignity and safety. – Caitlin Reiger
Speakers
Cassandra Goldie is CEO of ACOSS and Adjunct Professor with UNSW Sydney. With public policy expertise in economic, social and environmental issues, civil society, social justice and human rights, Cassandra has represented the interests of people who are disadvantaged, and civil society generally, in major national and international processes as well as in grassroots communities.
Professor Jessie Hohmann, from the UTS Faculty of Law, is a world-leading expert on housing as a human right. Her work has included lobbying the United Nations to hold governments to account for their obligations for the right to housing, campaigns with national and international housing rights and homelessness NGOs, and translating international standards into platforms for action toward fairer housing laws and policies.
Tania Thompson is a community leader, social housing resident-activist, and senior’s rights advocate. Tania was instrumental in creating the Social Housing Women’s Forum that promoted women’s health services and legal advice, as well as instigating programs during Covid targeting social isolation among seniors. She is a critical voice for tenants' rights in her neighbourhood and has forged strong partnerships between community, housing providers, and services.
Caitlin Reiger is the CEO of the Human Rights Law Centre and a human rights lawyer. She has spent the past 25 years working globally on transitional justice for mass human rights violations, international criminal law, and justice system reform. Since returning to Australia, Caitlin supported the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria in the design and establishment of the Yoorrook Justice Commission.
Amy Persson is the interim Pro Vice-Chancellor (Social Justice and Inclusion) at UTS. Amy is a public policy specialist who has worked across the private, public and not-for-profit sectors and was Head of Government Affairs and External Engagement at UTS. Previously, she held Senior Executive roles in the NSW Department of Premier and Cabinet and also ran the Behavioural Insights Unit and Office of Social Impact.