The right to housing, with a former Supreme Court judge

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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