From July 1, the Liberal Queensland government began a quiet purge. Under the guise of promoting “safe and peaceful neighbourhoods”, it launched a new anti-social behaviour policy that threatens to evict public housing tenants and cancel their social housing applications — while also banning them from reapplying for social housing for two years — if they are deemed to have breached “zero tolerance” standards for behaviour deemed “dangerous and/or illegal”.
Queensland Housing Minister Sam O’Connor has defended the move, claiming that “Labor let public housing management descend into chaos with no practical framework for housing officers to take action against the small minority of people who do the wrong thing”. But this narrative is as dishonest as the policy itself.
The truth is, Queensland has had an anti-social behaviour management framework in place for over a decade. The introduction of formalised measures to manage tenant behaviour was part of the Housing 2020 Strategy, implemented under former premier Campbell Newman. What’s new is the severity; the zero-tolerance approach.
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This policy is about neither dealing with dangerous behaviour nor giving housing officers “new tools”. It’s about weaponising old tools to purge public housing tenants and artificially shrink the homelessness statistics. It’s about shifting people out of public housing and scrubbing them from the homelessness ledger.
This policy is designed as a blunt instrument that punishes entire households for accusations, not convictions. Under these rules, it doesn’t matter if you’re a single mother, an elderly tenant, or someone with a disability. If you, or anyone associated with your home, is deemed to have stepped out of line, you are punished.
What is ‘anti-social behaviour’?
The Queensland government under Premier David Crisafulli has conveniently created a sweeping, catch-all definition that blurs the line between serious criminal acts and the everyday realities of life in poverty.
There are three categories of anti-social behaviour, which are designed to cast as wide a net as possible, ensuring the policy can be weaponised against anyone the department deems “undesirable”.
General nuisance behaviours include activities that “disturb the peace, comfort or privacy” of neighbours. In plain terms? This could be anything from a loud argument, children playing loudly, or even a late-night gathering. Things that happen in every household, except that if you’re in public housing, they become grounds for eviction.
Serious behaviours escalate to things like using “aggressive, abusive or obscene language” or “harassing neighbours”. But what constitutes harassment is subjective; a heated disagreement over noise, a personal conflict, or even a neighbour who just doesn’t like you can be framed as harassment. Reckless property damage is also included, without consideration for the fact that many public housing homes are already in disrepair, and tenants are often blamed for damage.
Then there’s the dangerous or severe behaviours category, which includes illegal activity, physical assault and drug offences. However, tenants can be evicted for both proven and alleged illegal activity; simply being accused or suspected is enough.
The policy also makes explicit that tenants are responsible for the behaviour of their visitors and household members. If a visitor to your home, or a guest, who may have nowhere else to go, is charged with an offence or making a loud noise, the tenant is the one who will pay the price.
Sleight of hand
A key consequence of this policy to focus on is that tenants evicted under these rules are banned from reapplying for social housing for two years. This is where the government’s statistical sleight of hand becomes clear.
To receive support from any federally funded homelessness service (through the Immediate Housing Response program), a person must have an active social housing application. If you’ve been evicted for alleged anti-social behaviour, you’re cut off, locked out of access to services designed to support you in moments of crisis — such as losing your home.
You are effectively erased — no longer existing on any housing or homelessness register.
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This policy will allow the government to purge waitlists, decrease “reported” homelessness figures, and allow them to spin the narrative that Queensland is managing the public housing crisis. The reality, however, will be a growing group of people — many of them mothers, Aboriginal people, people with disabilities, and terminally ill people — left without access to any form of housing support. The homeless will exist, but only in the shadows.
A crisis ignored
Homelessness in Queensland has increased by 20% since 2018. Greater Brisbane alone now has more than 112,000 households experiencing housing stress, up 22,000 since the 2021 Census. The number of people at risk of homelessness across Queensland has skyrocketed by 80%, jumping from 396,000 to a staggering 715,000. And at last count, there were 47,820 people on Queensland’s social housing waiting list. The average wait is two and a half years.
Yet, rather than addressing this crisis, the government is choosing to criminalise the people most affected by it. Even sleeping rough is becoming illegalised. Moreton Bay Council declared sleeping in its parklands illegal, and then Brisbane City Council announced it would be “cracking down” on rough sleepers in their parks. So, while the government is busy evicting people from housing, local councils are working to criminalise their very existence in public spaces. Homelessness is being reframed as a public order offence, not a systemic failure of housing policy.
Housing is a fundamental right, one Australia is obliged to uphold as a signatory to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. By implementing a policy that denies people the ability to even apply for assistance, the Queensland government is breaching its obligations under international human rights standards. Moreover, federal funds, paid for by taxpayers, are being funnelled into homelessness services that are now structurally prohibited from offering support to the most vulnerable people in our communities.
The Queensland government is manufacturing a disappearing act.