Government re-election “historic opportunity” for human rights-based housing policy

Housing and the cost-of-living were dominant themes during the campaign, which saw Labor re-elected with an increased majority. The major parties offered competing visions for responding to these issues and in the end, the government easily prevailed. Among the Coalition’s promises was a plan to allow first home buyers to access up to $50,000 from their superannuation, to go towards a deposit.

Arif Hussein is a senior lawyer at the Human Rights Law Centre. He laments the fact that the public discourse about housing isn’t framed differently. “Right now, the debate is dominated (by) numbers and prices and we see that in terms of … profits having been prioritised at the expense of people’s right to have a house,” he says.

Hussein says the ‘human right to housing’ is contained in article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). “In Australia, I think we’ve seen in the past few years this right come into sharp focus because of the cost-of-living crisis that everybody’s experiencing (and) the inflation that everybody’s experiencing,” he says.

A recent report by the Human Rights Law Centre and the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) law school, noted that in the most recent census, 120,000 people were experiencing homelessness, up 5 per cent from the previous census.

The report called for housing to be enshrined as a human right under Australian law. “Recognising a right to housing acknowledges and protects the importance of housing to safety, dignity, privacy and autonomy,” said the report.

“In the report also, we mentioned that there’s over 237,000 people across Australia seeking assistance from homeless agencies, so it is a problem in Australia right now,” says Hussein.

He agrees that the absence of a Federal Human Rights Act is an obstacle to affordable housing. “Right now, the debate around housing, as we saw in the election, it’s dominated by talks of numbers and prices. It’s not focused on people,” says Hussein.

Labor promised a 5 per cent deposit for first home buyers and $10 billion towards up to 100,000 homes reserved for first home buyers. The party also pointed to existing measures, such as working with the states to improve renters’ rights and increase rental assistance.

“In the election, we saw a rejection of housing policies that asked people to raid their super and retirement savings for housing security,” says Hussein. “People are looking for transformative change that puts them at the heart of housing policies.”

“I think it’s a historic opportunity that in the second term, this government sets a lasting legacy for human rights and enacts a Human Rights Act as a landmark, transformative reform,” says Hussein. “(It) should include all of our rights, including the right to housing. And this will allow all the rights, including the right to housing, to be considered and protected when governments are coming up with new laws, policies and decisions.”