Why Housing as a Human Right matters in the ACT

30 December 2024

The Government should prove it’s on the side of citizens when it comes to housing

The ACT Greens recently circulated draft legislation that would enshrine housing as a human right, following advocacy to all parties by ACTCOSS and others.

Making housing a human right might strike some as odd at first glance.

Deeper analysis suggests that we should change the way we think about rights and reveals the benefits that would flow to the ACT community from making housing a human right.

In the West, the most common concept of rights flows from 18th century thinkers in Europe and North America.

These were a collection of wealthy white men who were at the top of their political and economic pyramids.

When they thought about rights, it was in the context of already having wealth and power, and their worry that they would lose them.

The main threat they saw was government, because most other individuals were insufficiently powerful to threaten them.

This perspective is still influential, perhaps especially in America, where gun laws are designed to enable people to stay armed as part of enforcing their rights against government.

The American Bill of Rights is effectively a list of how wealthy white men worried about government interfering with their lives.

The intellectual accomplishments of these thinkers can be acknowledged even as we understand the dangerous limitations of their thinking.

Ironically, a different threat to people’s rights emerged in the 18th century – powerful corporations.

For example, it was the East India Company, not the British government, which colonised India at that time. Its mismanagement of India, including during famines which led to catastrophic levels of death, was one of history’s greatest violations of human rights.

Today, some international mega-corporations have revenue that exceeds that of many countries.

As they can influence our lives in unprecedented ways through collection and use of data, more Australians see corporations as a threat to our rights.

If Australian intellectual traditions were more influenced by Indian history, we might have realised these dangers sooner.

Similarly, if our thinking about rights had been more influenced by people experiencing poverty or discrimination, we might think about rights as a means of ensuring access to essential entitlements that remain out of reach for some, not just protecting what we already have.

An expanded idea about rights could include the right to housing. It could also include the right to a healthy environment, as the ACT government brought into law in August, much to its credit.

In this expanded idea about rights, governments are not just a threat to rights, they are an essential force to protect people’s rights. This is especially the case for people who happen not to be at the top of the economic or political pyramid.

Already, virtually all Canberrans expect that the government will help protect its citizens against discrimination on the basis of their gender, sexuality, race or religion.

Making housing a human right will help protect people from discrimination in housing and ensure that vulnerable people have access to emergency accommodation.

It will also mean that the government considers housing alongside other rights in its standard review of legislation.

Importantly, making housing a human right does not oblige government to immediately build substantially more public housing.

Nor does it suggest government should ever replace a market-based approach for most Canberrans.

The history of housing in the ACT is a perfect example of the role of government in protecting people’s rights.

At the time of self-government in 1989, over 12 per cent of all housing was public housing.

Government recognised its role in helping ensure all people were housed, even if it didn’t label this as a right.

That figure shrank to less than 6 per cent in 2024, as the government favoured a market-based approach for more people. As a result, public housing waitlists have soared, and there are far more people experiencing homelessness now than 35 years ago.

Labor and Thomas Emerson committed to increasing the proportion of all housing which is social housing in their recent supply and confidence agreement.

This is an important step by government to protect people’s right to housing.

Recognising housing as a human right is the logical next step and a signpost of the government’s intentions.

Ultimately, enshrining housing as a human right is an acknowledgement from government that it is on the side of its citizens, and understands it has an active duty to us rather than only an obligation to stay out of our way.

Opinion piece originally published in The Canberra Times on December 30th, 2024.
Read the editorial here.
For more information or comment, please contact
Devin Bowles, CEO, ACTCOSS, on 0413 435 080 or 02 6202 7200

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