MEMORIAL DRIVE: THIS SHOULD NOT BE HAPPENING IN AUSTRALIA IN 2026

There are some images that should stop a government in its tracks.

In 2026, in Western Australia, in one of the wealthiest, most resource-rich parts of a wealthy developed country, families, pensioners and ordinary Australians are living in tents, cars and caravans along the side of Memorial Drive in Rockingham. Not hidden deep in the bush. Not in some distant country Australians watch on the nightly news.

On the side of a road, about 40 to 50 kilometres from the Perth CBD.

Memorial Drive has become a highly visible symbol of Western Australia's housing and homelessness crisis. The City of Rockingham itself acknowledged the situation in April, saying it was dealing with homelessness along Memorial Drive and Point Peron and working with State Government agencies and homelessness services. Between January and mid-April alone, the City recorded 216 requests relating to people experiencing homelessness across Rockingham.

When the situation first attracted significant media attention in April, reports described dozens of people sleeping rough there. By July, media reports were describing hundreds of people in tents, vans and vehicles, including families with children and elderly Australians, with the encampment reportedly doubling or tripling over a matter of months.

The fact that the number is anything remotely approaching this scale should be enough.

Ten years of numbers tell the story

Strip away the political talking points and look at what has happened to housing in Perth over approximately the past decade.

These aren't numbers dragged from social media.

REIWA's September 2016 report recorded 10,709 active rental listings across metropolitan Perth, a median house rent of $380 a week, and a rental vacancy rate of 6.6 per cent. The same REIWA material shows Rockingham itself was part of the Perth metropolitan rental data being measured.

REIWA's historical data also puts the Perth metropolitan median house price at approximately $531,000 in the year to June 2016.

Fast-forward to this week.

For the week ending 6 September 2026, REIWA reports just 2,023 properties available for rent across Perth, 1,364 houses and 659 units. Its latest price data puts the Perth median house price at $960,000 and median house rent at $750 per week.

That is an extraordinary deterioration in housing affordability and availability.

In 2016, Perth renters had more than 10,000 properties on the market. Today, they have barely 2,000. At the same time, the price of renting a house has almost doubled.

Wages haven't come remotely close

Yes, Western Australians are earning more than they were ten years ago.

ABS data shows full-time adult average weekly ordinary-time earnings in WA were $1,703.20 in November 2016. By May 2026 they had increased to $2,227.40. That's an increase of around 31 per cent.

Sounds reasonable until you put it beside housing.

Wages: up 31 per cent.

House rent: up 97 per cent.

House prices: up 81 per cent.

A person earning the average full-time WA wage has not seen their income remotely keep pace with the cost of putting a roof over their head and remember what “average full-time earnings” means. It isn't the income of a pensioner. It isn't JobSeeker. It isn't a single parent working three days a week. It isn't an apprentice. It isn't somebody working casual hospitality shifts. It is the average earnings of a full-time adult employee.

If housing has become substantially less affordable even against that benchmark, imagine what the equation looks like further down the income ladder.

And no, this can't simply be blamed on unemployment

Western Australia's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 6.3 per cent in August 2016. In July 2026, it was 4.4 per cent.

So Western Australians aren't simply unemployed in vastly greater numbers than they were ten years ago. Unemployment is actually lower. People can work. People can earn more money than they did a decade ago and still find themselves unable to secure somewhere affordable to live.

That should destroy the lazy assumption that everyone sleeping in a car, tent or caravan simply needs to “get a job”.

Some of the people interviewed at Memorial Drive have described exactly this pathway. One former tradie told reporters he had previously rented nearby before a sharp rent rise contributed to him ending up sleeping rough. Another woman had previously worked as a disability support worker before finding herself living in the back of her car.

These aren't abstract statistics anymore. They're people.

So who is accountable?

At the beginning of this comparison in 2016, Western Australia was governed by Colin Barnett's Liberal-led government. Barnett served as Premier from September 2008 until March 2017, after two terms in government.

Labor swept the Liberals out at the 2017 election under Mark McGowan and has remained in government ever since. Labor won again in 2021 and retained government comfortably under Roger Cook in 2025, winning 46 of the 59 Legislative Assembly seats.

Labor has governed Western Australia continuously since March 2017. We're now in September 2026. After almost nine-and-a-half years in power, pointing backwards can only get you so far.

How can a government have nearly a decade in office while rental availability collapses by approximately 81 per cent, rents almost double, house prices surge more than 80 per cent, and families end up living in tents beside Memorial Drive.

Even the local council has been asking for another solution

In May, the City of Rockingham formally moved to ask the State Government to investigate whether underutilised accommodation at four Memorial Drive recreation camps could temporarily house vetted people experiencing homelessness.

The City's own motion acknowledged that rough sleeping around Memorial Drive and Point Peron had become an “increasingly prominent local concern” and argued that the existing accommodation warranted assessment for emergency use.

More recent local reporting says the State Government has since deemed the proposed recreation-camp option unsuitable, with one local report estimating roughly 250 people were sleeping rough around the area.

Maybe those particular facilities genuinely aren't suitable. There may be planning, safety, servicing or legal problems that make the proposal unworkable.

But then comes the obvious question:

What is the alternative?

Because leaving people indefinitely beside a road isn't one.

This cannot become normal

That is probably the most disturbing part of all this. Australia is beginning to become accustomed to scenes that should horrify us.

People living in cars.
Families living in tents.
Caravan encampments appearing beside roads and parks.
Workers competing with dozens of other applicants for a rental.
Pensioners unable to afford the cheapest properties available.

We hear the words “housing crisis” so often that they risk becoming background noise. Memorial Drive is what those words actually look like and there is something deeply wrong when a country with Australia's wealth, resources and standard of living reaches a point where scenes like this can exist without provoking absolute urgency from every level of government.

In Western Australia, in 2026, Australians are living in tents, caravans and cars along Memorial Drive because they have nowhere else to go.

SOURCES:
REIWA – September Quarter 2016 Market Update
REIWA – Perth Market Insights, 7 September 2026
Australian Bureau of Statistics – Average Weekly Earnings, Nov 2016
Australian Bureau of Statistics – Average Weekly Earnings, May 2026
Australian Bureau of Statistics – Labour Force, Aug 2016
Australian Bureau of Statistics – Labour Force, July 2026
City of Rockingham – Ordinary Council Information Bulletin, May 2026
The West Australian – Memorial Drive, Safety Bay
WA Parliament Hansard – 7 May 2026
Baldivis Times – 3 September 2026
WA Parliament / ABC News