ABSTRACT
The origins of the Australian public housing system are closely linked to the 1930s and 1940s slum abolition movement. Both were conditioned by a discourse which attributed the subjectivities of slum dwellers to their physical surroundings; the solution to the slum was therefore the rational, scientific planned housing estate as exposure to such orderly spaces would rework slum dwellers into citizens. This discourse continued in the work of the Tasmanian Housing Department but was modified to include the concept of personal culpability for one’s material circumstances. Culpable subjects were excluded from Departmental estates and their containment and control largely delegated to the Department’s non-professional welfare officers. In the face of ongoing political pressure, the Department insisted that ‘problem’ tenants were not its problem and that work with them was the province of other government agencies. By the 1980s, however, a different set of discursive relations had destabilised the Department’s authority. An assertive, influential community sector occupied the status of ‘speaking subject’, advancing a new conceptualisation of ‘need’ organised around individual characteristics. According to the sector, such need existed because the Department failed to meet it and lacked the expertise to address it. This established the Department discursively as an inadequate and subordinate subject.
