The Prime Minister wants us to be clever. Well here's clever: How about we make sure everybody's got a place to call home?
We're a rich nation, so how can we not afford to provide something as basic, as essential, as a place to live? What are the compelling economic reasons why we can't make sure everyone has a place to feel safe, a place from which we can go to school, take care of our health, and go to work?
How is it okay to deny people, including children, a place where they can love and be loved, where they can connect with each other instead of being cut off and, sometimes literally, locked out?
We can afford to line the pockets of corporations that manage offshore concentration camps in our name — a highly expensive exercise in cruelty and barbarism. We carefully construct limbos to which we consign people who, as it happens, believe so strongly in Australia that they risk life and limb to come here as they flee the cruelty and barbarism that has overtaken their countries of origin.
If we want to be clever, if we want to be innovative, these are the very people we should welcome with open arms: people who believe in us, and desperately want to build a different future with us.
If we want to be clever — and I agree with the Prime Minister that we should indeed aspire to this as a society — we'll make sure everyone has a place to call home, along with a well-resourced, needs-based education system and universal healthcare. Let's face it; not having a place to live and feel safe is about as bad as it gets when it comes to barriers to education.
Homelessness can also mean unbearable and overcrowded living conditions, parents struggling with the difficult job of trying to get a job (while being told that they are just not trying hard enough), or kids trying to attempt the herculean task of studying when all they have is a tiny corner of a cramped and noisy lounge-room that doubles as a bedroom at night.
The problem of homelessness and the shortage of social and affordable housing is so huge that we need a massive solution and a massive financial commitment if we want to lay claim to being civilised and fair, let alone smart and innovative. This is why, among other things such as reforms to negative