Dan Poole
Those working on the frontline for grassroots homelessness organisations report an alarming trend in governments vilifying rough sleepers, rather than helping them. The tension between community concerns around the use of public spaces and the housing crisis, which is pushing increasing numbers of people into homelessness, reached an unhappy crescendo in April 2025.
In pouring rain, a council in South-East Queensland destroyed a local homeless encampment using excavators and other heavy machinery, leaving rough sleepers exposed to the elements. Some lost items of significant sentimental value, including in one case the ashes of their deceased daughter.
Following a lengthy court battle, the Supreme Court of Queensland delivered its landmark human rights decision this month that will shape how local councils (and other public authorities) approach homelessness enforcement. The Court held that the council acted unlawfully in key respects, and breached many of the rough sleepers’ human rights.
The legal findings
Queensland’s Human Rights Act requires public entities such as local councils to actively consider the human rights of those affected by their decisions, and to only engage in action that limits human rights to the extent that doing so is reasonable and demonstrably justified. The human rights protected are primarily drawn from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and so international law and foreign judgments are often considered. Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory are currently the only other Australian jurisdictions to have enacted human rights legislation.
In its decision, the Court accepted that, for the rough sleepers, their tents and campsites were ‘homes’: not in a rhetorical sense, but in a practical one. That finding mattered because the rights engaged were not abstract. Rather, council’s action had the effect of, and was calculated to, unlawfully and arbitrarily interfere with the rough sleepers’ homes in a manner which was protected by the Human Rights Act.
Key to this finding was the fact that the rough sleepers had lived in the particular public park for extensive periods ranging from a few months to about a year, and had assembled shelters that physically resembled homes (for instance, tents had been broken into separate rooms, there was cooking equipment, and a bed). The Court determined the infringement on the right was arbitrary in the legal sense, because it was “capricious, unpredictable, unjust or unreasonable”, and was therefore unlawful.
The Court also included that council’s action breached other human rights, such as the right to property, because the rough sleepers’ belongings were destroyed without consent; and the right to protection from cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, because the rough sleepers were left to sit under a tarp in the rain and were deprived of priceless sentimental items. Also breached was the right for families and children to be protected, because, in respect of the small number of rough sleepers that had been offered some form of alternative accommodation, that accommodation was located in a rural area a long distance from their families, support networks, and caring obligations.
Enforcement cannot be a substitute for housing policy
One of the most striking aspects of the judgment is its recognition that forcing people to ‘move on’ does not solve homelessness; it simply redistributes it to another geographical location. In the Court’s analysis, if the likely outcome of government enforcement of homelessness is merely displacement, and where the rough sleepers genuinely have no other reasonable options, the action will likely breach human rights.
Importantly, the decision does not require councils to provide housing, which is the domain primarily of the state governments. It does, however, clarify that councils and other public entities are required to comply with their human rights obligations when exercising coercive powers that affect peoples’ fundamental rights.
Dan Poole and Nathan Kennedy acted for the applicants in Bobeldyk & Anor v Moreton Bay City Council. Nathan is a former member of the Australian Human Rights Institute's Advisory Committee.