> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://redflag.org.au/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Albo is proud to be a houso—will anyone else get the chance?
- URL: https://redflag.org.au/article/albo-is-proud-to-be-a-houso-will-anyone-else-get-the-chance/
- Published: 2026-09-18T08:26:22.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-18T08:26:22.000Z
- Author: Anneke Demanuele
- Tags: Australia

“I’m proud to be a houso, and I’m proud of the community in which I grew up.” These were the words of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, spoken with a quivering top lip, after One Nation leader Pauline Hanson attacked his mother, Maryanne Albanese, for living most of her life in a public housing unit.

“Housing commission houses should not be there for people to live in them for 30, 40 \[years\]”, Hanson said. “And he said his mother lived in the same one she was born in for 65 years.”

Albanese may be proud to be a houso, but his party is ensuring that very few others will be able to access the level of housing security he and his mother did. Across the country, public housing is being eroded and depleted—homes and buildings left in disrepair, demolished or sold off to private developers. The idea that the government should build and provide long-term public housing to those who need it has been almost entirely destroyed.

In Victoria, public housing has been decimated. Walk-up estates have been bulldozed to make way for luxury developments, and 44 apartment towers are scheduled for demolition. The UN special rapporteur on adequate housing, Koldo Casla, has condemned the slated demolition of the 44 towers. In his letter to the Australian government, Casla writes:

“I am concerned that affected residents have primarily been treated as occupants of public property rather than as rights-holders entitled to participate in decisions fundamentally affecting their homes and communities.”

Demolishing housing will force residents out of homes meant to be permanent, out of their communities and away from vital services and infrastructure they depend on. All in the middle of a housing crisis.

According to the Victorian Housing Peaks Alliance, Victoria needs 377,000 more social housing dwellings by 2051 to accommodate everyone who needs low-cost housing. Instead of demolishing public housing and handing over public land to private developers, the government should refurbish existing stock and build new homes.

“It must be reasonably feared that the destruction of 44 public housing towers in central locations or the city will rather amplify these problems and not be a suitable measure to address these preexisting violations of the right to adequate housing”, Casla notes.

The Victorian Labor government says that the total number of dwellings will increase. But it will cut public housing unit numbers significantly. They will be replaced by a mix of community housing, run by not-for-profit agencies, and private dwellings sold at market rates. Tenants have fewer rights, face higher costs, enjoy less long-term housing security and are more easily evicted from community housing as compared to public housing. Data from the Australian Institute of Housing and Welfare in 2023, for instance, shows that when comparing public and community housing tenure length, the proportion of public housing residents that have lived in their homes for more than a decade is twice that of the community housing sector.

Residents in inner-city suburbs will and have been shunted off to outer suburbs, far from the schools, kindergartens and other services they rely on and that connect them with others. Many won’t be able to return to public housing at all.

This adds to the general erosion of the idea that housing is a human right that should be guaranteed to all. Instead of being an option for working-class people to live in, raise their families and build their communities over a lifetime, public housing is increasingly seen as a temporary option for only the most desperate—those living in extreme poverty and for whatever reason unable to participate in the labour market. Today, it is being deliberately run down to make its demolition or sell-off inevitable.

Public housing in Australia has always fallen below the standard of Britain and Western Europe. Writing in the *Marxist Left Review*, Jordan Humphreys details the limitations: “Access to public housing would be restricted to those on very low incomes, so it would be put aside only for the very poorest of the poor. If not enough of the poor could be found, then the Housing Commissions were encouraged to sell off ‘excess’ housing stock”. By the 1960s, two-thirds of British people lived in public housing, compared to only 4.2 percent of Australians (today it is about 2.6 percent).

The Victorian government’s housing strategy document describes public housing as a “legacy”, and what remains is intended only as a transition point on a “housing continuum”. The expectation is that it is a stepping stone to private housing, rather than a long-term arrangement. This is exactly the argument Pauline Hanson is pushing—public housing is not a permanent solution, but a temporary “helping hand”.

Albanese can be proud of his mother and proud of being a houso all he likes. The reality is that his party is making sure no one else will be.