Thursday, 17 August 2023

Public housing

Samantha RATNAM (Northern Metropolitan) (17:29): (411) On Tuesday night a number of us attended the final vigil at the Barak Beacon public housing estate in support of Margaret Kelly and public housing residents everywhere. For six weeks on every weeknight without fail the community kept vigil with Margaret, the final resident of the Barak Beacon estate in Port Melbourne. It was home to 89 well-built public homes that provided shelter and, more importantly, a community for public housing residents – some, like Margaret, for over 25 years. People raised their families and made friends. They created a community. They knew each other and cared about each other’s lives. But this neoliberal government does not seem to care. They have pursued their plans to privatise public housing in Victoria. For weeks on end the community kept vigil with Margaret in her plight to save Barak Beacon. They occupied, protected, painted and protested with every last drop of energy they had. I want to thank all those who have attended and supported Margaret in any way. The vigils have been led by public housing residents and joined by advocates and community members from near and far.

This government hide behind a lot of PR spin and post-truth tactics, but the reality is they are currently demolishing public homes, with plans to hand over two-thirds of the public land to private developers for expensive housing and some community housing, with zero public housing to be rebuilt on the sites. They are outsourcing the provision of public housing in Victoria. A good government would be keeping public land in public hands so we can get on with building the 100,000 public homes we urgently need. Residents and public housing advocates welcome the development of this and other estates and in fact welcome more public housing to be built on these sites, but they have been united with Margaret in opposing the privatisation of public housing and public land.

Throughout Margaret’s campaign to stop public housing from being privatised, the Victorian government have treated her with contempt and dismissed her genuine concerns at every turn. The minister has refused to meet with her. When she and other public housing residents attended the Parliament last sitting week to watch the matter of public importance debate in the lower house, government members accused members of the public of being set up to be there to pretend to be genuine community members. I see now that this is what the government members must have to do to manage the dissonance and the denial they must be experiencing. They have to convince themselves that the plights of people pleading to them are not real or genuine. They have to categorise Margaret as a troublemaker because it is easier to dismiss her. They do not have to care as much if they can label her as someone unworthy of attention. They labelled public housing residents and advocates who came to Parliament as ‘pretenders’ because they could not fathom that people actually experiencing housing distress could be fighting their government, who they so desperately need to believe are the good guys in this story. I have some news for the Andrews Labor government: you are not the good guys anymore. You are not the bastions of progressive thought or policy; you are neoliberal centrists, and your privatisation of public housing proves it. It is time to stop pretending. I ask the Minister for Housing to apologise to Margaret Kelly for evicting her from her home, a public home, of over 25 years.