EVICT Talk with Dr. Jessie Hohmann – Addressing Violations of the Right to Housing in Australia

November 18th, 2021

Historically, there has been very little discussion of the human right to housing in Australia.  Australia ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1975, accepting obligations for the right to housing, but has never incorporated the Covenant rights into domestic law.  The government remains hostile to international human rights scrutiny and Australia is an outlier among democracies: at the federal level it has no domestic bill of rights.  Opportunities for claiming and enforcing the right to housing are limited.

Perhaps it is for these reasons that the right to housing has rarely featured in advocacy or activism in Australia, nor formed part of the public discourse around housing issues.  The reason is not, however, because all Australians already enjoy the right to adequate housing.  In fact, there are significant problems in accessing safe, secure and adequate housing in Australia, which have become more prominent in recent years.  These issues undermine Australia’s self-projected image as a ‘lucky’ country of high living standards, social equality and fairness.

This talk assesses violations of the right to housing in Australia with a focus on two of the seven elements expressed by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as integral to the enjoyment of the right: affordability and habitability.  The talk discusses the ways in which Australia is in contravention of these elements of the right, and considers how greater attention to the right to housing – in public activism and advocacy – might open up new avenues for changing the debate on housing in Australia, and for redress.

About the speaker

Dr. Jessie Hohmann joined UTS Faculty of Law as Associate Professor in 2019. She is an internationally recognised expert on the right to housing in international law. Her research also engages with the material culture, objects and materiality of international law, and with Indigenous Peoples and international law. Her 2013 monograph The Right to Housing: Law, Concepts, Possibilities (Hart) was shortlisted for the Society of Legal Scholars Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship. She is also the editor of Hohmann and Joyce (eds) International Law Objects (OUP 2018) and Hohmann and Weller (eds) The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: A Commentary (OUP 2018).

The EVICT Monthly Talk Series takes place every third Thursday of the month. For the next talk, please visit our events page for further information.