ACT Supreme Court verdict quotes 1997 Australian film ‘The Castle’
An ACT Supreme Court judge made a surprise nod to an Australian cult classic during a ruling in favor of public housing tenants who claimed government policy violated their human rights.
The three Canberra women who made the complaint had been living in ACT public housing for 27 to 42 years before they were ordered to move in 2020 and 2022 under the state government’s Housing Expansion and Renewal Programme.
The properties in question, included in the ACT government’s program, would be sold to the private market or redeveloped after existing tenants were relocated.
But on Friday Judge Verity McWilliam found the three women had been denied procedural fairness and their human rights had not been properly taken into account in the decision to release them.
In the decision made public, Judge McWilliam said the crux of the dispute was the lawfulness of the actions of the Social Housing Commissioner and his representatives in forcing the trio to relocate.
He wrote: “It goes without saying that any intrusion into a person’s home must be legal.”
“That pithy one-liner, voiced by Darryl Kerrigan’s fictional character in The Castle (1997), still resonates: It’s not a house, it’s a home. A man’s house is his castle… You can’t just break in and steal our houses,” Judge McWilliam wrote.
While Justice McWilliam stated that the quote referred to constitutional legal protection, not state protection, he argued that the thought there was the same and that these “words have deep roots.”
He later wrote, quoting the Roman philosopher Cicero: “Expressions of a person’s connection with his own home date back at least to Roman times; Cicero (the Roman statesman and lawyer) wrote: What is more sacred than a man’s own home, more strongly guarded by every sacred feeling?”
The court decided that the legal expenses of the three women would be paid by the Commissioner, while all three women would remain in their homes.
During the trial, the Commissioner accepted that procedural fairness had been denied, but completely disputed the trio’s human rights claim.
In the ACT, public authorities are required to act consistently with human rights to comply with the state’s Human Rights Act, and under this legislation the concept that a person’s home is inviolable or essentially protected against unlawful or arbitrary intrusion is also recognized.
