43
this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2026
43 points (97.8% liked)
Australian Politics
1875 readers
46 users here now
A place to discuss Australia Politics.
Rules
This community is run under the rules of aussie.zone.
Recommended and Related Communities
Be sure to check out and subscribe to our related communities on aussie.zone:
- Australia (general)
- Australian News
- World News (from an Australian Perspective)
- Aussie Environment
- Ask an Australian
- AusFinance
- Pictures
- AusLegal
- Aussie Frugal Living
- Cars (Australia)
- Coffee
- Chat
- Aussie Zone Meta
- bapcsalesaustralia
- Food Australia
Plus other communities for sport and major cities.
https://aussie.zone/communities
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
She's not wrong though, 65 years in the same public house? Did they never get a job?
This might surprise you, but there are plenty of people with jobs who live in public housing.
And you can discount the first 18 years or so, being that she wasn't an adult and was presumably with her parents. Which gives you a little clue about the socioeconomic class she was in.
Being a single mum in the '60s wasn't a walk in the park either. Plenty of gender inequality in wages/job conditions, plenty of "a woman's place is in the kitchen", and plenty of leaving high school in grade 8/9 after doing "home economics" (read: cooking and sewing). After that, with 18 years of looking after your kid, it's too late to go back to uni/tafe in the '80s when you're in your '40s, because you don't have the time outside of work to even think about meeting entry requirements. So you're stuck with the low-pay jobs in an economic climate that was busily inflating property values as much as possible.
So give Albo's mum a break. She managed to get her son enough of a leg up to get out of the trap she was in.
You can afford rent in Sydney now (just) working minimum wage, you could afford rent then. 18 years is easy to excuse but what about all the other years. Especially from '75 onward to '00 when rent pulled away from wages
Prove it
Monthly budget for share house vs renting 1 bedroom apartment. Lower quartile of the market in Sydney
Maybe if you, IDK, read the article your question would have been answered...
"Albanese's mother, Maryanne, was a single mother and disability pensioner who lived with chronic rheumatoid arthritis for most of her adult life."
A lot of us are chronically ill, shouldn't be working and get sweet fuck all for it. Medications not covered by PBS and cost thousands. Still taxed to the shit so the lucky bludgers can live an easy relaxed life with everything provided courtesy us
Public housing in Australia was simple affordable housing owned by the state and rented at affordable rates to working families, filling a gap that wasn't being served by the private sector. As policies and funding changed over the years perceptions of public housing changed. It became scarcer, trashier and stigmatized. I am not sure what your point is if you have one.
Public housing was a very good thing that we walked away from because of this us vs them bullshit. It increased supply and put downward pressure on pricing. No wonder the landlords hated it and lobbied against it.
Maybe that's how public housing was, but in WA at least you're currently illegible if you have more than ~40k in assets OR household income above $551 a week (that's half minimum wage)
Public housing started changing in the 80s I think when a lot of it was sold off and it became reimagined as welfare housing. Remember his mother died in 2002. For most of her life public housing was affordable housing for working families.
That's a good point, I think the key detail here is that everyone born in the late 80s onwards will have a very different picture of social housing to those born before the changes
so typical i see this time and time again. if someone has more support the issue isnt THEM its the fact your aren't getting support. the minimum wage earning mother in public housing isnt your enemy
Working a job and earning HALF of minimum wage disqualifies you from public housing here, no incentive to ever leave the system (disease or otherwise)
And i think thats terrible
I am finding it hard to believe a word that you are saying.
Does it matter? Of all the people in the world to complain about, the one you choose is a dead old poor woman who was largely irrelevant. You have very strange priorities.
I had an aunty with rheumatoid arthritis and I knew it was incredibly debilitating but I didn't see her much and never really understood until I saw it hit my not so old wife. It is really fucking scary and a lot more than just joint pain. Fortunately she got to a specialist and on treatments that have it more or less under control but a lot of the treatments wouldn't have been around in the past and once joint damage is done it is permanent.
Public housing didn't used to be only for people on welfare, at least not over here in South Australia. It might have been different interstate. When the Liberal and Country League established it here 90 years ago it was affordable accommodation for working families to help industrialize the state. South Australia was always struggling economically against the biggest states and had to work harder and smarter to attract industry and workers. A worker might be ok with lower pay if rent was more affordable. Playford accelerated the industrialisation post WW2. People living in housing trust homes were making Holden, Chrysler, vehicle parts, whitegoods etc and while the homes were basic, the shit they had in England or wherever they came from wasn't great either.
I think the idea that public housing is a scarce resource for people who can't or won't work is a modern invention. It was supposed to be affordable housing, with no judgements and no time limits. It wasn't emergency housing. It filled a gap in affordable housing that private enterprise couldn't supply then or now.
Clueless.