A flyer landed in my hands. It was an invitation to the Australian Housing Conference in Sydney.

The flyer spoke of bringing a broad range of housing providers and consumer all over Australia to improve the provision of housing on a more equitable basis.

Sounds great! Where do I sign up? I scan the front page of the flyer for a web address or email. All I see is a phone number and a Telex number. Telex? Is that a new app? Nope, we are talking about the ancient predecessor of email.

Telex machines were used by business and government to send typed messages instantly over long distances using phone lines before fax and email existed.

The once ubiquitous telex machine was the precursor to fax. Photo: Wikimedia

Just how old is this flyer?! Oh, it’s from 1982 but it really reads like it refers to 2025.

Let’s revisit the conference goals, one by one—and see how far we’ve come (or not).

Objective 1: Affirm and extend support for the social and economic importance of housing

• I’ve written dozens of columns on the social and economic importance of housing in the last four years here in The New Daily alone. So have countless others.
• As of 2025, the social and economic role of housing is well understood: We commoditised a societal necessity, permanently priced many people out of homeownership, and drove up rents so much that many low-income earners are forced to skip meals to make rent.

Objective 2: Promote greater equity in the housing of all Australians

• In the context of housing, equity means that all Australians have a fair opportunity to access safe, secure, and suitable housing.
• That has certainly failed. Since 1982 we created an investor and homeowner class you’ve done well and a renter class that is increasingly struggling.

Objective 3: Develop a broader and clearer understanding of housing issues

• Countless think tanks, journalists, and policy writers have clearly identified how the Australian housing market works since 1982.
• Allan Kohler’s Quarterly Essay is just one of many great summaries. We know what drives prices up, what drives them down.

Objective 4: Promote co-operation between housing groups through new initiatives

• Have governments on all levels, community housing providers, non-profits, churches, tenant advocacy groups, private developers, financiers, banks, urban planners, and academics successfully created better housing outcomes for Australians since 1982? I will let you decide…

Objective 5: Consider proposals for

• A) simulating a higher level of housing industry activity and employment to meet people’s needs.

Australia failed to create or import enough construction workers to build enough housing and drive down construction costs in the process. The relatively few people that ended up working in the construction sector can now charge high wages – good for them but it drives up the labour component of housing massively.

• B) stabilising the availability and price of housing finance

We succeeded in stabilising housing finance – by making it easier for banks to sell us massive loans.

• C) addressing the specific needs of those inadequately housed

Building standards have improved since 1982 and we now live in better and safer dwellings – that’s a win. Unfortunately, housing is much less affordable (in 1982 a house set you back 3-4 times your annual income but now costs about 8-10 times your income) and led more people to reside in dwellings that are too small for their needs.

• D) expanding the provision of housing in a variety of public tenures

Now only a mere four per cent of the housing stock are public housing. Over the last 40+ years a large number of federal governments consistently failed the poorest Australians by allowing the public housing stock to decline.

At our 1982 conference, attendees chose which seminars they would want to attend. If you run a housing conference in 2025, you can offer the exact seminars.

We have not markedly changed the system in which we provide housing since 1982. Are you expecting any changes, now that we have a new (old) government? Change is just around the corner – any decade now…

Now that we discussed the harsh housing realities let’s focus more on the broader social and historical shifts hinted at in the flyer.

Of the hotels suggested in the flyer I could only identify one as still operating. The Wentworth in Sydney is now the Sofitel Sydney Wentworth and a nightly rate starts at around $276.

The cost per night went up fourfold over 43 years. This seems roughly in line with house price increases in Sydney over that time. For our 2025 copy-cat housing conference we should be able to negotiate a discounted conference rate too.

The conference had an official airline partner. Trans Australian Airlines (TAA) might sound like a hyper progressive airline to young readers in 2025 but was of course a government-owned airline established in 1946 that was meant to provide affordable, reliable air travel across Australia.

The goal was to break the private sector’s aviation monopoly. TAA was known for innovation and high service standards. In 1986, it was rebranded as Australian Airlines, and in 1992, it was merged into Qantas following the airline’s privatization.

Today, conferences don’t have an official airline partner anymore. We also book our own flights and don’t need to mail a cheque with the registration fee anymore.

The fee to participate at this truly timeless housing conference was a mere $50 – a true bargain considering that a conference like this could’ve been repeated unchanged for the last 43 years.

I also noticed that the Australian Labor Party was the only political Party listed as a participant. Perhaps Labor’s new housing minister can ring up a few attendees from 1982. After all, they’ve had 43 years to come up with a plan to make housing more equitable and affordable.

Many thanks to urban planner Amanda Wetzel for alerting me to the fantastic historic prop that this 1982 flyer certainly is. My thanks are also extended to the Hunter Research Foundation Archives who preserved this document.

Simon Kuestenmacher is a co-founder of The Demographics Group. His columns, media commentary and public speaking focus on current socio-demographic trends and how these impact Australia. His podcast, Demographics Decoded, explores the world through the demographic lens. Follow Simon on Twitter (X), Facebook, or LinkedIn.