First Week...

I have been a week in Australia and already feel immersed in housing systems! The Australian dream is of the red brick house set in its own quarter acre of land. So what you have in Sydney is a city the size of Greater London with a quarter of the population. Urban sprawl. Or, speaking as a visitor, the whole place feels like one big suburb.The madness of unregulated housing markets here has also been damaging and affordability is a major issue. There is a significantly sized private sector in renting. Quality is at best a question mark from what I can see. Thankfully community (housing association type organisations) and public (local authorities and state government) housing has received a major boost from the Federal government and large building programmes for subsidised housing are currently underway.Housing certainly gets everyone talking. But today the big topic is the weather. The worst dust storms in 70 years. We were up at 6am and to say the sky was orange would be an understatement. Tons of top soil from the west blowing over the area, while Kevin Rudd and his team are working on climate change diplomacy in the USA. It feels very fitting and reminds me of the very real importance of ensuring that housebuilding and climate change policies are integrated.That's it for now folks. Am off out to see the yellow (so they are saying on the radio) opera house ...