ABSTRACT
During the post-war period, the Tasmanian Housing Department asserted a privileged claim to expertise and experience in public housing construction. Its principal product, the ‘broadacre’ estate, was assembled through a modern, rational, orderly system, the key component of which was a day labour force. Though broadacres were not idealised as perfect, they were planned as communities, refined through continuous improvement and a source of departmental pride. Yet the broadacre was a contested object. Alongside concerns about the cost of servicing and infrastructure, outside subjects populated the broadacre’s technically realised spaces with individuals and households perpetually vulnerable to harm. Under external and internal pressure to align the management of its budget with the new norms of economic rationalism, the Department withdrew from broadacre construction and wound back the day labour force. It confined its building program to infill development and explored other ‘innovative’ methods of meeting housing need which did not involve the provision of houses. These adjustments in practice created space in which the work of housing assistance could be discursively redefined as the provision of a service to individuals and the broadacre designated the most recognisable, self-evident symbol of public housing failure.
