Throughout the federal election campaign most political commentators (‘journalists’ is too kind) banged on continuously about personalities and politics, not policies. All surface, no substance.
But there were lots of polices, many of which we discussed in ToT here and here. Now that Labor is in power, we should further examine their policies, including indigenous rights, women’s wages and DV support, social and affordable housing, innovation and manufacturing.
‘Homes’: One Policy to Rule Them All
All those issues, so rooted in inequality, could be addressed through one policy: let’s call it a ‘Homes Policy’ (in contradistinction to a ‘housing policy’). The basis is that everyone deserves a safe home, particularly those most often forgotten: the working poor, socially supported, indigenous, the millennials and the aged, women in danger, and of course the homeless. That’s a third of us.
‘Homes’ puts the emphasis on the occupants, rather than ‘housing’ which speaks to a broad corporate policy. ‘Homes’ is a policy that respects the diversity of us, with no uniform solution, which we can see in its many different working parts which are outlined below.
But there is one common thread that needs to be overcome. Housing in Australia is ‘property’, a giant market-based ‘Ponzi’ scheme that continually benefits owners over renters. The solution most often proffered for the ‘forgotten third’ is…
