Martin Flanagan rails against Australia's lack of social and political diversity that, mixed with our debt-ridden false sense of affluence, expresses itself as political complacency. ("Country of Despair", Insight, 21/10). The recent exposure by The Age of the appalling housing conditions faced by many tenants in our community is a case in point.

While The Age is to be commended for 'exposing' this disgraceful scenario, the fact is that the terrible plight of low income tenants has been well known to the federal and state governments for a long time. There are dozens of reports commissioned by government that demonstrate enormous hardship faced by thousands of tenants. There are 250,000 people on public housing waiting lists in Australia, with twice that number eligible but not bothering to apply because they are told the waiting time is up to 20 years. In the face of these terrible facts, nothing gets done.

Governments have also learned to control the welfare organisations that see these problems on a daily basis by tying them up on restrictive service provision contracts. Not since the Cain Labor Government in the 1980's have we had a government policy that understood that social justice means providing resources directly to tenants to help them to lobby for housing justice and ensure that their voice is heard.

Governments support billions of dollars of tax perks to private housing investors that make some individuals very rich, while government expenditure on public housing has been falling every year since 1986. Is this the divided society we want?

Yours sincerely,
Doreen Rushby, chairwoman,
Housing for the Aged Action Group, Melbourne