The purpose of this research is to provide a socio-historical and political framework for
analysing two small government programs, the Victorian Rental Housing Co-operative
Program and the Local Government and Community Housing Program, through which
community housing principles were introduced into Australian public housing policy.
The context for this research is the failure by the housing rights movement to continue
with aims which were politically independent of the ALP, the descent of the movement
into "tenure politics", the move to the Right by the ALP after the collapse of
Keynesianism as an economic tool, and the possible privatisation of public housing by the
Liberal Government through the use of housing vouchers. Links between these themes
are postulated.
A picture of these events and processes, and the ideologies and motivations of the
individuals involved in the public housing policy communities both in Victoria and
federally, has been built up through the examination and analysis of contemporary
documentation, interviews with key informants and through secondary sources. The
major conclusions postulate a relationship between the adoption of small community
housing programs in the late 1970s and 1980s and the strategic co-option of the housing
rights movement by the ALP, and the current inability of the movement to articulate a
housing politics which transcends "tenure politics" at a time when the movement is most
severely threatened.