The experience of electioneering, specifically door knocking, is one that every citizen, young or old, ought to attempt once in their lives. It bears the hallmarks of a true character-building rite of passage, requiring resilience, a thick skin, and perseverance in the pursuit of desired outcome. Active participation in the democratic process is a double-edged sword: it is both a birthright and a civic duty, that is to say, a privilege and an obligation. So it is that voting in Australia has been compulsory since 1924. Of course, Australian legislators did not grant Indigenous Australians the right to vote until 1962 (and notably, as always, Queensland, not until 1965). This last fact, of course, just another reflection of Australia’s racist heritage and thereto, shame. But let’s not, those of us in our comfortable homes, surrounded by the spoils of economic prosperity, belabour the point, the spoils of which has not extended to all Australians.
In this election, in the heart and minds of too many Australians, is that exactly, that economic prosperity the spoils of which has failed to extend to them, to the 3,319,000 Australians – including 761,000 children – who live in poverty. The incumbent government and its predecessors should be looking at these numbers and issuing a mea culpa to all Australians. For what has led a wealthy nation, with its vast resources, and certainly without lack of capability, to allow almost 13% of its citizens to languish in poverty? What do the holders of high office, elected to serve the interests of their constituents, have to say to the ones left behind about the unabated rise in the cost of living and the ever-growing inequality? Indeed, how to explain how successive policies have led to a situation in which the wealthiest 10% of households possess almost 50% of the total wealth of the nation? Or, that this fact also translates to the bottom 60% of households only sharing 17% of total wealth?
Housing is a human right and therefore, by definition, a non-negotiable. Nonetheless, for those 13% of Australians living in poverty and for those whose incomes have failed to grow at the same rate and pace as the increases in the cost of living, adequate housing seems a utopian dream. Successive government policies have led to the financialization of housing in which that very basic of human rights that affords families shelter, safety and security has been turned into a vehicle for investment. It has been turned into a spectacle of a Darwinian kind, designed, it would seem, so that only the ‘fittest’ thrive, for a version of rentier capitalism to run amok, cheered on by tax breaks and incentives the illustrate a sort of visceral determination to sear the landscape with insalubrity and insecurity. The government needs to step in and carpe diem. The demos, the people, has to to be louder, more unequivocal, more vehement in their collective protestation: that this status quo will not hold, and it cannot hold. It’s not sustainable. Forget societal harmony, people’s lives are at stake.
The solution to lack of housing is to build more housing. The government is more than capable of doing something, dare we say, brave. That is, it can actually stand up and represent the common good, the interest of the majority of electors. The government is not beholden to the dictates of the market, but it is certainly answerable and accountable to the people of this great country. It does not have to allow the market to remain unchecked and unmanned, dictating the quality of life in the lucky country. The solution to this housing crisis – and the ever increasing cost of housing – is to build more housing. That is to say, increase supply to meet demand, and thereby achieve some kind of equilibrium in the market. What happens when supply meets demand? Well, this is nothing but Economics 101, and surely it is something that Australia’s national officials should have no trouble parsing, given that 44% of them received the very best education that money could buy, the current Housing Minister included. To solve the housing crisis, the government has to entertain the solution from a human rights perspective. Quite simply, that adequate housing is a human right and is non-negotiable.
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