Equality Speaks
Australia may have dodged the bullet that has put the US, Britain and most European economies on life support, but our 2009 collection of essays shows that – despite our enviable economic position – Australia is not the egalitarian paradise that many believe it to be.
Equality Speaks features an eclectic mix of writers who highlight a common challenge – to use our (relatively) stable economic times to make the shift to a fairer Australia. It brings together some of our sharpest minds to look at paths to a more equal Australia in areas like transport, homelessness, education, women, tax, refugees, work and employment amongst others. It includes new research on the distribution of wealth in Australia.Homelessness
"To state the obvious, the main reason people are homeless is because they dont have a house. Rates of housing affordability and availability have dropped to alarmingly low levels, with public housing becoming a safety net option only available for those with the most complex needs." Hollows and Keenan
Homelessness is one of the starkest examples of inequality in Australia as Andrew Hollows and Tony Keenan show. Presently 105,000 people are counted as experiencing some form of homelessness — one third are children under the age of 18, and 16 per cent are sleeping rough on our streets. While the narrative of homelessness has largely been about its impact in Sydney and Melbourne, it is overwhelmingly a problem in rural and remote areas, with an especially high overrepresentation of Indigenous Australians.
As well as being a particular form of inequality, homelessness compounds others. It impacts on the education of children, on health, and on political participation. Hollows and Keenan applaud the ‘joining up’ of housing, law reform, education, policing and social security policies in the Australian Government’s White Paper on Homelessness, making the obvious point that the key cause of homelessness is the houses stupid.
The collapse in expenditure in public housing alongside the growth in private rental demand and increased rental costs means that the degree of investment and policy reform needed to tackle homelessness is huge.
Download Chapter 8 Homelessness59.31 KB
