This year the housing campaign Everybody’s Home, launched in 2018 by a coalition of housing, homelessness and welfare organisations, convened a People’s Commission into the Housing Crisis, which heard from over 1,500 individuals and over 100 organisations affected by the housing crisis. The Commissioners have now released their final report. It highlights housing and homelessness issues affecting women that WEL has also been raising:

• Most women and children who flee violence don’t receive the support and housing they need to escape a violent home, with thousands returning to violent partners or becoming homeless each year.
• There is a big increase in First Nations people, especially women and girls seeking support for homelessness. There is a lack of secure and culturally appropriate housing for First Nations women experiencing domestic violence, a particularly significant driver of homelessness for First Nations women and children.
• Older people, particularly women, are struggling in the private rental market while waiting for housing.
• There is a lack of access to secure and appropriate housing for women exiting prison.

Read the full report ‘Voices of the Crisis’.

Essential reading: Toxic Parliaments and what can be done about them

Marian Sawer and Maria Maley’s well timed book ‘Toxic Parliaments and what can be done about them’ was launched at ANU on 29 July.

In their preface the authors explain how momentum for reform in four countries with Westminster systems - Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK - was created by the #MeToo movement and similar revelations in the parliamentary workplace.

As they put it: ‘These parliaments were characterised by extreme power imbalances between parliamentarians and staff and a lack of professionalised employment practices. Codes of conduct and independent complaints bodies were resisted on grounds of parliamentary privilege: the ballot box was supposedly the best means of holding parliamentarians accountable for their conduct. The taken-for-granted status of ‘adversarialism’ as the fulcrum of politics also rendered gendered mistreatment invisible’.

The book examines the different reform approaches taken in the four countries but focuses on the dramatic developments in Australia after angry women marched on parliament houses in 2021.

You can buy it or download it for free on Open Access HERE or ask your public library to order it in.

Professor Sawer’s excellent history of WEL, ‘Making Women Count’, is also worth checking out in your library.