Earshot

Sunil's mother loved telling him stories of his colourful uncle, India's best-known sceptic, who devoted his life to disproving fraudulent gurus' "miracles" by eating fire, bending forks and floating mid-air. But at the heart of the Sceptic's magic was a disappearing act.

During the pandemic lockdown a documentary maker grows increasingly obsessed with his neighbours and sets out to meet them all.

Peter Mares travels to Adelaide, home to the South Australian Housing Trust, which once set the gold standard for state housing authorities worldwide, but now struggles to house even the most vulnerable and needy citizens. With the public sector failing to meet the need, Peter goes onsite with an enterprising developer who claims he can build and sell houses at price that even pensioners can afford.

The COVID-19 virus has exposed the failings of Australia’s housing system like never before: rough sleeping and homelessness, the insecurity of renting, and a real estate boom-bust cycle. Our housing mess can be measured in lost productivity, poor health, high debt and growing inequality. Peter Mares visits four capital cities, to investigate what’s gone wrong with housing in Australia, and what we might do about it, beginning in his home town of Melbourne