Australia

Victoria is in its worst housing crisis since the Great Depression. This crisis is the direct result of respective governments neglecting housing despite being entirely aware of the sectors proliferating state of disrepair. Current housing minister Harriot Shing is not only complicit in this crisis, but actively an enabler, allowing her friends in big financial and real estate firms to profit from the suffering of the rest of the city.

Fears about losing jobs to automation have become commonplace, but according to United Workers Union (UWU) research and policy officer Lauren Kelly, who researches labour and supermarket automation, rather than manual work being eliminated, it is often augmented by automation technologies. This broadens the concern from one of job loss to more wide-ranging implications for the nature of work itself. That is, she says, “rather than replace human workers with robots, many are being forced to work like robots”.

In addition to the monitoring tactics used upon workers, supermarkets also direct their all-seeing eye towards customers through an array of surveillance measures: cameras track individuals through stores, “smart” exit gates remain closed until payment, overhead image recognition at self-serve checkouts assess whether you’re actually weighing brown onions, and so on. Woolworths even invests in a data-driven “crime intelligence platform”, which raises significant privacy concerns, shares data with police and claims that it can predict crime before it happens – not just the plot of Minority Report but also an offshoot of the deeply problematic concept of “predictive policing”. Modern supermarkets have become a testing ground for an array of potential rights-infringing technologies.

Late last year, the company introduced a new framework to enforce an efficiency rate for picking of 100%. Workers who weren’t meeting the standard would be put into a coaching program. Some were directed to “stop all time wasting and non-productive behaviors”, according to warning letters seen by Guardian Australia. Failure to improve could lead to disciplinary action and even loss of employment. One worker described it as a “bullying” tactic.

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A spokesperson for Primary Connect, Woolworths’ supply chain arm, said its coaching framework helped “to ensure a fair approach to the standards is applied to any personal circumstances or abilities”.

[…]

But Guardian Australia spoke to a dozen current and former workers for Woolworths and Primary Connect, who claim the standards are unfair and putting their safety at risk. All requested anonymity for fear of losing their jobs.

As more people shop online, there’s been growing attention to the treatment and tracking of workers in warehouses run by e-commerce conglomerates like Amazon. In June, the state of California fined the company for failing to properly disclose its productivity targets to workers – a decision the company is reportedly appealing. But Australian warehouse workers have long been subject to this style of control. Engineered standards were introduced by Australian supermarket chains in the late 1980s and 1990s and were the target of industrial action.

“It’s a fantasy of total efficiency,” Christopher O’Neill, a research fellow at Deakin University who studies workplace automation, said of engineered standards. “The argument was: this was a ‘scientific’ way of rationalising work and eliminating wasted time,” he said.

“It’s basically a pseudoscientific veneer over this kind of fantasy of being able to control every second of every day.”

Some nice infographics based largely on census data, provided as a turnkey service for local government.

The 2025 Rental Affordability Snapshot surveyed rental listings across Australia and found that affordability has crashed to record lows. The Snapshot surveyed 51,238 rental listings across Australia and found that:

   352 rentals (0.7%) were affordable for a person earning a full-time minimum wage
   165 rentals (0.3%) were affordable for a person on the Age Pension
   28 rentals (0.1%) were affordable for a person on the Disability Support Pension
   3 rentals (0%), all rooms in sharehouses, were affordable for a person on JobSeeker
   No rentals were affordable for a person on Youth Allowance.

In response to the findings, Anglicare Australia is calling on the Government to return to directly funding and providing housing itself, instead of leaving housing to the private sector. Anglicare Australia is also calling on the Government to wind back landlord tax concessions.

This project built on previous Australian and recent international research to develop a set of budget standards for low-paid and unemployed Australians and their families.  

The family types included are:

• a single person (male and female) 
• couples without children
• couples with one and two children 
• a sole parent with one child.

The approach incorporated existing community norms, expert judgments and relevant evidence from social surveys. It emphasised the views expressed by low-paid and unemployed individuals in focus groups to ensure that the standards are grounded in everyday experience and reflect actual needs.  

The results were also used to inform debate and guide decisions about the adequacy of minimum wages and income support payments for the unemployed required to support healthy living consistent with individual needs, family needs and prevailing community standards.

Ooh. This is really nice.

The annual rental affordability index (RAI) report is an easy-to-understand indicator of rental affordability relative to household incomes. Since its establishment in 2015, it has become a crucial tool for policymakers. It helps track rental affordability trends and informs evidence-based policy decisions – highlighting nuances between places and the experiences of disadvantaged households. To produce the Index each year, we work closely with our partners: National Shelter and Beyond Bank. 

Pissweak:

The study authors said the effects of decades of underinvestment in the social housing sector were gradually being reversed as state and federal governments looked to ease the housing crisis.

Dr Martin said the renewed focus on the sector posed an opportunity to deliver housing support differently.

“It may not always be about the golden ticket of a social housing tenancy, even though that’s what a lot of people will rightly want and need,” he said.

His examples included additional assistance to very low-income households in the private market and a bigger focus on individual housing needs.

Queensland recently reported an average wait time of about 21 months for high-needs households moving into government-owned social housing.

In Victoria, priority households face a wait of about 18 months. The wait for a two-bedroom property in inner-city Sydney is 10 years or more.

“We do need a more person-centred approach,” Ms Toohey said.

“We can integrate choice-based letting where people can search for their own social housing properties, or have a system whereby we check in on people on the list and see if there’s any other housing assistance you can provide.”

This report provides data and insights about social housing need across Victoria and models social housing growth targets required to meet expressed demand and total demand. These growth targets are based on a set of housing scenarios, policy scenarios and distribution scenarios. The method is detailed in the body of this report.

All data, insights and analysis, and modelling in this report has been produced by SGS Economics and Planning for the Victorian Housing Peaks Alliance.

While the government has housing targets for the private market, there are no strictly defined social housing targets.

"In Victoria, the current proportion of social housing is 3.1 per cent. After the Big Housing Build, it will be about 3.5 per cent — still well under the national average of 4.5 per cent (which itself isn't enough to meet demand)," the report notes.

"In order to catch up to the national average of 4.5 per cent social housing stock, Victoria needs to build 7,990 new social housing dwellings a year for the next 10 years."

Without building 7,990 new social dwellings each year for the next decade, Victoria's proportion of social housing would drop to about 2 per cent by 2051, the report forecasts.

The report also notes its target is "modest", with modelling showing the state would need to build 10,700 social housing dwellings a year for the next decade to meet "expressed demand" for social housing — enough to house those on the social housing waitlist as well as those currently receiving social housing assistance.

To meet the total demand for social housing — enough for all Victorians who need assistance, including those who haven't formally requested it — the state would need to build 27,900 social dwellings a year.