Aug 2, 2024
Australia’s “housing disaster” could soon turn catastrophic,
says former Victorian Supreme Court justice Kevin Bell. To counter
this, the nation needs not just legislative action but also a
reframing of our collective mindset to view housing not as the
Great Australian Dream but as a fundamental right.
In this episode of The Lawyers Weekly Show, host Jerome Doraisamy
welcomes the Honourable Kevin Bell AO KC, former justice of the
Supreme Court of Victoria and patron of Tenants Victoria, to
discuss his new book – Housing: The Great Australian Right – and
why housing is no longer a dream for Australians but rather a
“nightmare”, his upbringing in social housing and motivation to see
an overhaul of our housing system, and why housing needs to be
viewed as a right for all persons across the community.
Bell also unpacks the four-pronged disaster currently facing
Australia’s housing system, recalibrating the national mindset
about housing as a right rather than an investment or commodity,
what a national plan can and should look like and why legislation
is needed instead of policy, our collective duty to view housing as
a human right, and whether he is optimistic that Australia can
avoid catastrophe.
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