Govt Urged to Back Greens’ Bill: Housing as Human Right
Today the cross-party Standing Committee on Legal Affairs has unanimously recommended that the ACT Parliament support the Greens’ legislation to enshrine housing as a fundamental human right in the Human Rights Act.
The committee has recommended the ACT Legislative Assembly pass the Greens’ Human Rights (Housing) Amendment Bill 2025 with delayed commencement to ensure proper preparation for the right.
Leader of the ACT Greens, Shane Rattenbury is a member of the Standing Committee on Legal Affairs and introduced the Bill in December of 2024.
As stated by Leader of the ACT Greens, Shane Rattenbury:
“Today’s news is a momentous step towards finally enshrining housing as a human right in this territory. Talk about this proposal has been going on in Canberra for well over a decade and now, the Greens Bill to enshrine housing as a fundamental human right is a real pathway towards making it happen.
“A tri-partisan committee has now recommended to the government that they pass this Bill based on the evidence of countless experts, from everyday Canberrans to stakeholders working with vulnerable Canberrans.
“This legislation is backed by committees, it’s backed by the community, it’s backed by international law -and now I look forward to it being supported in the Assembly
“By making housing a human right in this city, we can fundamentally reshape the conversation about providing quality affordable housing in this city. This is because the legislation will require the government to consider housing within all policy development and service delivery across the territory-and that’s the first step to this government coming to terms with the scale of the housing crisis.
“For people currently being disproportionately impacted by the housing crisis, be they First Nations, people with disability, children at risk of harm, victim-survivors of domestic violence or otherwise-this reform couldn’t come soon enough.
“This legislation will require this government, and all future governments, to take concrete actions towards treating housing as a human right-meaning we shouldn’t just get lip service about affordable and accessible housing, but actual action to address the issue.”
The majority of submissions made to the inquiry into the Human Rights (Housing) Amendment Bill 2025 support the legislation.
Organisations supporting the Bill have raised serious concerns about Canberra’s housing crisis through the committee inquiry, highlighting how the right to housing could help address the issues they have raised:
https://greens.org.au/act/news/media-release/committee-recommends-government-support-greens-bill-make-housing-human-right