Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

Yesterday, we said goodbye to Paul Pholeros, renowned Australian architect, who died on 2 February 2016 after a short battle with illness. He was a pioneering figure in the interaction between housing and health and he made a very significant contribution to our understanding of the health improvements that can be made through quality housing. He used these lessons to improve the lives of thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, and in later years took his model of 'housing for health' to less-developed countries around the world.

His biggest contribution was to form Healthabitat in 1998 with a mate, Dr Paul Torzillo, and Stephan Rainow from Alice Springs. The three directors first met in 1985 in the Anangu Pitjatjantjara Lands in South Australia. They were thrown together by Yami Lester, at the time Director of Nganampa Health Council. Yami saw that despite the Anangu control of the health service in the region and the improved treatment of illness, health just simply had not improved. He proposed that medical services and a healthy living environment were both required to achieve health gains.

In 1994, after years of trialling ways to improve housing and Indigenous health, the report Housing for health: towards a health living environment for Aboriginal Australia was published by Healthabitat. This report codified much of the thinking and the results of trial and error conducted over the previous decade. It quickly became the benchmark for improving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander housing. The work received the Royal Australian Institute of Architects President's Award. It has since sold over 5,000 copies, many overseas, and provides the most concise statement of Healthabitat's aims and methods for improving health by improving the immediate living environment. Healthabitat found that the main reasons for housing failure were simply a lack of routine maintenance and poor initial construction, with nine per cent of damage being due to vandalism or to misuse or overuse by tenants. That is quite a small proportion. This flies in the face of the common misconceptions about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander housing. Those misconceptions need to be addressed.

From 1999 to 2006, under this process, over 4,500 houses were surveyed and improved in most areas of Australia. There have now been 132 projects in five states and the Northern Territory. Ten years later, the figure has grown to 7,500 houses across Australia since 1999.

All housing was repaired or built after extensive consultation with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in which the housing was located. The model was then extended to less developed countries. I am reminded by this of an article by Vicki Laurie in the Australian of 4 February. It says:

He took Healthabitat’s principles to Nepal, Bangladesh and Soweto in South Africa; at the invitation of the New York housing authorities, he helped ghetto dwellers get actively involved in fixing their homes.

It is a very important thing this man has done and led. When he extended the model to less developed countries, that included Nepal, where a project in Kathmandu Valley helped to build 59 toilets to improve the health and sanitation of a community of 450 people.

In 2010, Healthabitat was invited to New York by Common Ground to trial a Housing for Health project in Brooklyn. In 2008, the work of Healthabitat won the International Union of Architects Vassilis Sgoutas Prize for the alleviation of poverty. Paul Pholeros collected the award in Turin, Italy, on behalf of the national Healthabitat team. He was selected to serve on the National Policy Commission on Indigenous Housing in 2009.

Housing and homelessness advocacy body NT Shelter said Paul Pholeros's work:

… he had become the 'standard for best practice' in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander housing. 'His fine work has contributed to improving the livelihoods of people not just across NT and Australia, but also in other disadvantaged communities throughout the world.'

That was Tammy White, the CEO of NT Shelter. Fred Hollows Foundation CEO Brian Doolan—and a mate—said:

In recent years Paul and Healthabitat have also been working with The Fred Hollows Foundation to develop, design and construct a prototype solution to deliver water in remote communities in Ethiopia to help eliminate the eye disease trachoma.

They are looking at ways to increase the water available for face washing and a toilet system and method of construction to remove human waste safely and reduce flies. This is a significant component of preventing the spread of trachoma and ending avoidable blindness

His colleague Paul Torzillo said:

Paul had an incredible mind and dynamism that he used consistently over 30 years to improve the living standards of people living in poverty.

Through the sheer force of his personality he was able to inspire a generation of people to work to improve the living environment of disadvantaged communities. He was able to generate real momentum in the international community—

to build quality housing for those most in need. May he rest in peace.

Question agreed to.

Federation Chamber adjourned at 12:59.

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