On 14 March 1977, Queen Elizabeth officially opened the twin Matavai and Turanga Towers, seniors public housing high-rise buildings in Sydney’s inner-city Waterloo that had recently been completed. The event – attended by thousands of well-wishers – was the last Sydney engagement by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh during their three-plus week “Silver Jubilee” Australian visit.
As Richard Dennis (Executive Director of the Australia Institute) pointed out in a speech to the not-for-profit (NFP) youth housing advocacy organisation YFoundations, that would never happen today. Imagine a public housing estate opening on the agenda of King Charles’s five-day Royal tour to Sydney and Canberra. It wouldn’t happen; we don’t celebrate our public housing estates anymore that way.
We have travelled a long way since the 1950s: From “1947 to 1961, a period of mass migration, Australia’s housing stock grew about 10 per cent more than its population, with governments responsible for almost a quarter of new construction.” Robert Menzies knew “‘the market’ could not be left to deal with the problem; that it required large-scale government involvement to make housing affordable.”
Turanga public housing tower, October 2024In 1996, public housing made up 6% of Australian housing stock, which fell to less than 3% by 2020. Our housing is a mess, a combination of a complex series of factors, including taxation rules, massive immigration, restrictions in supply, demographics (fewer people per household means more places needed just to house the same population), treatment of housing as investment rather than places to live and … a sustained decline in government investment in public housing over decades. The growth of NFP community housing is welcome but insufficient to fix the scale of the problem. Building more public housing “would not only benefit those who can qualify for public housing directly but those in the private sector who will benefit from less competition for rental properties.”
More public housing is not our sole answer, but it would be a big start. And perhaps the King’s next visit to Australia will include a public housing estate? If only.
This article is an opinion piece and reflects the views of the author. It was originally published on October 16, 2024 on Don Perlgut’s Blog and has been republished with permission. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent the position or views of Inner Sydney Voice.