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The Victorian government’s plans to demolish Melbourne’s public housing towers recall the human rights concerns raised during the snap lockdowns of the pandemic. By Louis Taffs.

The Victorian government’s destruction of public housing

Former Victorian Greens leader Samantha Ratnam at a housing protest this month.

Credit: AAP Image / Diego Fidele

Last week, protesters gathered outside the entry of 33 Alfred Street, North Melbourne, one of the many recognisable public housing towers scattered across the inner city. The crowd, including residents and Victorian Greens MP Gabrielle de Vietri, were stopping workers from beginning a job that will eventually end with the demolition of this building and 43 others.

There are many angles by which these demolitions are viewed. For the government, they are a transition to updated, efficient and socially cohesive social housing. For the protesters and residents, they represent an unnecessary eviction done in the name of short-term profit for developers and builders, pushing the poor out of desirable inner-city real estate.

In my view, it is something else – the next and final step from the Victorian government to erase from public consciousness the disastrous snap lockdowns of nine public housing towers during the first year of the pandemic. The decision to erase these towers literally removes the evidence of the crime.

The first time I visited 33 Alfred Street, it was July 2020 and the building was illuminated by flashing blue and red lights. Rather than residents controlling who entered their building, it was the police. A lot of them. The tower and all those inside had been put into an enforced lockdown with immediate effect.

The lockdown had been announced that afternoon by then premier Daniel Andrews. It lasted 14 days and was later described by the Victorian ombudsman, Deborah Glass, as “appearing to be contrary to law”.

Glass found the decision was not made with proper consultation of experts and violated the human right to humane treatment when deprived of liberty. Her report highlighted the lack of existing structures for community engagement and communication.

Residents had few avenues through which to raise concerns, other than calling the Department of Health and Human Services hotline. The department, her report found, could not effectively distribute information.

These conclusions came as no surprise. I had seen this disconnect between tenant and landlord firsthand. That night, while residents, guests and family members weren’t allowed either in or out of the towers, I had free passage.

At the time I was working a part-time reception job for a community healthcare organisation. The addresses of the nine towers were familiar: it was where a lot of our patients lived.

We were led by a Department of Health and Human Services worker into what appeared to be a community space on the ground floor and set up what quickly felt like a modern war room – a mix of high and low technology at work.

There were plastic trestle tables and laptops, their requisite cables strewn across the floor. Dozens of cheap mobile phones were being used for admin. On the walls were sheets of butcher’s paper where, with a big Sharpie pen, someone was writing apartment numbers and beside them the suspected number of occupants and a contact phone number if we were lucky.

During the following hours we scrambled to set up a system. The first priority was to figure out who was in each apartment. The department records, when we eventually got them, were inaccurate and incomplete. We then had to figure out who had Covid symptoms and provide them with pulse oximeters and establish regular contact so we could track their possible deterioration.

The second priority was to set up a system to triage the most urgent medication deliveries unrelated to Covid, such as insulin, Ventolin puffers, as well as opioid replacement and benzos for patients who were imminently facing withdrawal.

In these first frantic days, I remember some workers from the DHHS entering. After a moment, they started, quite literally, poking around. They noticed the windows were cracked and the cold wind was blowing through them. They looked at the disintegrating plaster tiles on the roof, exposing the plumbing and fire safety system of the building. They awkwardly stepped over our mess of cables and piggybacked power boards because so few of the outlets worked.

Once they regrouped, the DHHS workers caught everyone’s attention, introduced themselves, and made a pronouncement: it was not safe for us to be working in these conditions. We were confused. This was the condition of the room when we entered it only days ago, a room the DHHS is responsible for, and which, presumably, was used by members of the community and the residents of this tower.

The implication rapidly became clear: the conditions in which it was unacceptable for us to work were acceptable for others to live.

Two years on from the lockdowns, in September 2023, the poor condition of the towers was apparently no longer tenable to the Victorian government. Andrews made a televised statement, declaring they would be torn down: “They are old, they are out of date, they are no longer fit for purpose. They are derelict.”

This announcement was a complete shock to residents. Although Glass had recommended that the Victorian government should, among many things, issue an apology and ensure “participation of multicultural communities in policy, planning and project activities relating to public housing”, neither of those recommendations appears to have been followed.

The recognition of the residents’ human rights in Glass’s 2020 report is having a second wind, however. It forms the basis for the residents’ class action lawsuit against the Victorian government, initially led by plaintiff and resident Barry Berih.

The case was dismissed by Justice Melinda Richards on April 4, ruling that “the interference with the human rights of the residents was reasonable and justified”.

Louisa Bassini, of Inner Melbourne Community Legal, is now taking the case to the Court of Appeal. The legal centre argues that the towers do not need to be torn down.

“In the last trial, Homes Victoria CEO Simon Newport stated that he knew there was no [other] way forward but cited cabinet privilege when asked to provide evidence of this … You can’t have it both ways – using evidence but also hiding it.”

On Tuesday, the Greens introduced a bill to Victorian parliament, seeking to amend the Victorian Charter for Human Rights and Responsibilities to include housing.

“The bill reflects international covenants on human rights, in that it requires that everybody has access to adequate housing – not only that it’s affordable but also meets reasonable standards of habitability,” Gabrielle de Vietri tells The Saturday Paper. “This program [of demolition] strips public housing residents of all dignity – not only taking away their homes but destroying their communities that they’ve built up over decades and decades.”

A Victorian government spokesperson says this is overblown.

“While we’re getting on with delivering modern and accessible homes for people on the social housing register, the Greens continue to spend their time spreading misinformation and creating fear without offering actual solutions.”

Asked about the quality of housing and responsibility for running it, the spokesperson says: “We’re proud to partner with not-for-profit community housing providers to help deliver more homes for people on the social housing register. Community housing renters have the same protections as every other renter.”

As we worked during the lockdown in that community room, answering phone calls, with nurses counselling and advising, doctors prescribing medications, runners picking up and delivering drugs from the local pharmacy, as we tried to meet the needs of these people, it rapidly became clear that what was required was beyond the medical.

Across the road, the young people from the Australian Muslim Social Services Agency were gathering phone numbers to communicate with residents and we would help them get halal food to their aunties and uncles inside.

The questions began to mount. Who was responsible for the neglected state of this building? Who had failed to keep track of the people who live here? Where was their presence in the community?

The answers to those questions are slowly disappearing. The DHHS was dissolved in 2021, seven months after the lockdown. It was split into the Department of Health and the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing. Two years later, Daniel Andrews announced his resignation. He never apologised. “What I will not do is apologise for doing everything possible to save lives,” he said. “That’s what we did.”

Now, another two years on, the Victorian government is about to wash its hands of this injustice completely. It is dispersing the victims, dismantling the community, and disposing, ultimately, of the final piece of evidence – the towers where it all happened.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on June 21, 2025 as "An act of erasure".

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