G'day Radio Reversers,
This week on the podcast, Marissa catches up with Sam Tracy, Practice Director at Basic Rights Queensland, a community legal centre that works on human rights, discrimination and poverty-related laws. Marissa and Sam discuss a recent win on behalf of homeless clients in the Supreme Court in the case of Bobeldyk and Anor v Moreton Bay City Council; Eichin & Ors v Moreton Bay City Council [2026] QSC 27.
As most of you probably already know, the past five years has seen a sharp increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness across south east queensland. As the housing crisis has intensified, more and more people have been locked out of safe and secure housing, leading at least some people to end up sleeping rough. In turn, this has led to big debates about the politics of public space and who gets to be "at home" in the public realm. In heavily gentrified inner city areas, some other residents have been troubled by the presence of people sleeping rough in these parks, leading to a variety of responses to the "problem" of homelessness. For some local residents, people sleeping rough are neighbours in need - deserving of care, dignity and the autonomy to decide what kind of accommodation they need. Some of these residents have even gotten organised, setting up community dinners, donation systems, and anti-eviction support groups to protect their unhoused neighbours from eviction.
For other residents, however, the presence of people sleeping rough has been an unfortunate "eyesore" that they want councils to fix: not necessarily by resolving the fundamental injustice of the housing system, but rather by making people sleeping rough go somewhere else to do it.
In 2025, these competing responses to the housing crisis came to a head in the Moreton Bay City Council region, after a slew of complaints about people sleeping rough in parks led to the council forcibly evicting a number of people (including the claimants in the matter we're discussing in this week's show) from Eddie Hyland Park in Moreton Bay. Residents were given almost no warning about the evictions and very little time to prepare, and as a result, many suffered significant emotional and physical distress and lost priceless belongings (including in one horrific case, the destruction of the claimant's deceased daughter's ashes).
This case was brought on behalf of 8 of the people evicted from Eddie Hyland Park in 2025. While the decision sadly does not stop Council’s from enforcing laws to move people on and destroy their belongings, it does set some limits on the way that these evictions can happen. The Supreme Court in this matter determined that the way the council "evicted and disposed of property belonging to people experiencing homelessness breached the human rights (and other legal protections) of those affected and was therefore unlawful."
While this is not a resounding victory against evictions from public parks, it's a starting point for thinking about the role of lawyers and the legal system in this moment. For people sleeping rough, and for the people organising in solidarity with them, these kinds of legal processes offer a site of potential leverage. Forcing council's to slow down processes like evictions gives people more time to advocate for their own needs; more time to call in support; and importantly, more time for their neighbours and comrades to organise effective anti-eviction actions.
SO! Another rich and thought-provoking episode posing some important and challenging questions about how we can use all of the tools at hand to mitigate the worst injustices of capitalism while never losing sight of the root cause of its violence. Marissa and Sam talk us through this case and the decision by the Supreme Court, but they also contextualise this case in relation to the questions it raises about how public spaces are imagined and constructed in settler colonial states. Who is deemed as belonging, and who is rendered criminal? Whose presence is framed as threatening, and who is deserving of protection? Who gets to feel "at home" in this place? And what might demands for housing justice look like if they begin, as Radio Reversers Nat, Anna, Jonno and Mo ask in this piece, from the foundational violence of colonial occupation, rather than the liberal framework of human rights?
Marissa ends this week's episode by reflecting on the relationship between the criminalisation of homelessness and broader law-making which regulates, controls and restricts people's use of public space. Sam discusses a couple of key pieces of legislation passed over the last few months which further expand police powers to ban people from prescribed public places, as well as regulating the use of particular expressions and symbols - namely, those associated with the movement for justice in Palestine. Taken together, these laws represent a concerning continuation of the long-standing tradition of public space policing being used to criminalise and repress particular groups; particularly those whose presence (and sovereignty) is most unsettling to the settler colonial state.
Lots to dig into this week, and some interesting and useful through lines to next week's episode, where we catch up with Birri Gubba and Wanjeriburra activist and media-maker Sam Woripa Watson as he sets sail with the Global Sumud Flotilla aiming to break the siege on Gaza as well Dr. Samah Jabr, a Palestinian psychiatrist who talks to us about the psychological violence of occupation and the impossibility of mental "wellness" in the face of genocide.
Until then, thanks for listening, and if you can, please consider joining us as a paid subscriber to help us keep sharing stories that matter from across the intersecting frontlines in the glorious, complex struggle for collective liberation.
Anna (for the Radio Reversal collective)
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