‘Where’s the human dignity?’ As bulldozers roll in, this is the face of a Queensland crisis (2025)

Mark Ely begs for more time to pack up his life and clear out.

“Ten minutes mate, that’s all I’m asking.”

A council ranger responds: “Mark, you’re obstructing me from doing my job.” A squad of police watch on in case Ely physically resists.

The City of Moreton Bay worker gives him the 10 minutes. The 54-year-old became homeless when his rental was sold to a developer and converted into a McDonald’s. He was the first to make Eddie Hyland Park in Lawnton a home, three and a half years ago. Now he shifts a few more things into a small taped off area that has been set aside to store his belongings.

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The day before, Ely and seven other residents had been given one hour to move out of the park when council rangers arrived with an excavator to begin tearing down the tent encampment. While Ely’s home was among those to escape the wrecker on Wednesday, the council workers have now returned to finish the job.

As Ely pleads for more time on Thursday morning, police approach. He eventually gives in, turns away and sits slumped on his surviving possessions. As the place he’s called home is demolished, he says he can’t bear to look.

Ely’s tent was the second of three destroyed in the council’s two-day operation.

Staff from the area’s Labor state MP Nikki Boyd visited twice during that time to offer help to park residents – bringing food and water and taking names to advocate for them. Boyd has personally visited the tent city, one of the region’s largest, on a number of occasions and helped cook for residents.

The office of the local federal MP – member for Dickson and opposition leader, Peter Dutton – is also just a six minute, 2.5km drive away. With an election fast approaching, Dutton was on the campaign trail and far from his electorate while the council’s demolition of the encampment was occurring. His office was contacted for comment.

Ban on homelessness

Council rangers hit Eddie Hyland Park one month and one day after Tropical Cyclone Alfred.

During the storm many homeless people took cover in state-run evacuation shelters.

They were back on the streets when the storm passed, left to repair the damage to their tents.

By that time, the council had already decided to move them on.

Moreton Bay has Queensland’s longest social housing waiting list. During and since the Covid pandemic, numerous tent cities have popped up across the region, housing about 200 people.

Last year, the City of Moreton Bay began threatening to issue fines to homeless people, initially for sleeping in vans or with pets. Then, in February, it changed its local laws to effectively ban homelessness by repealing regulations that had allowed people to camp in public spaces such as parks.

There was initially an “education period”. Then, a fortnight ago, rangers began issuing compliance notices threatening to fine people up to $8065 for “camping on public land” or “storing of goods on council land”, giving them two weeks to stop. The notices did not warn that their property would be seized and destroyed. They came due this week.

On Wednesday, council rangers returned, issuing new notices – time was up for the encampment.

“All we’re doing is trying to survive,” Ely said at the time.

“We’ve got one hour they’ve given us to get rid of our stuff or they’re going to bulldoze it.”

Then come the rangers

Even when shelter is offered, it may not be considered suitable. Ely turned down an offer of temporary accommodation because he’d been kicked out before.

Then come the rangers.

One walks up to the tent and identifies himself, showing his warrant card.

Many residents initially talk tough. Armed with a lawyer, one tent’s occupants say they won’t move no matter what, and refuse to pack up.

There’s a period of negotiation, but always with an end point; you can have another 12 minutes to move the possessions you want to keep elsewhere, but that’s all.

All this plays out in public.

“You know that’s literally stealing,” one man yells at a council ranger as his neighbour is moved on.

“You think it’s funny, eh,” Tracey Osmond says.

Stacey Richardson tears off the tarp that serves as her roof as the authorities stand by.

“Fifteen people are watching her empty her life out and not one of you – not one of you – has the decency to give her a hand,” her other neighbour Shane Mason yells.

Then the rangers come back, remove any gas bottles or other hazards, and whatever is holding the tent up so it lies in a pile.

Finally the excavator starts.

“We’re homeless already and you’re going to make us more homeless – and then you’re going to fine us, how does that make sense?” Osmond yells as the demolition begins.

The foul smell of human waste hits the air as the excavator ploughs through another tent. The detritus is first arranged into a pile, then lifted bit by bit into a waiting rubbish truck to be taken to the tip.

‘They’re failing these people’

“Where’s the human dignity, the respect for those people as citizens of the Moreton Bay area?” asks Kevin Mercer, the St Vincent de Paul Society Queensland CEO.

“There’s nowhere for the people to go, and often finding a tent somewhere in a space is their best option. If the council has a better option, great. But if they don’t, where’s their duty to protect their citizens? I think they’re failing these people.”

Cameron Parsell, a professor of social sciences at the University of Queensland, describes the move as “morally abhorrent” and virtually unprecedented in the modern era.

It’s so rare that the only solid research on homeless clearances comes from the United States, he says.

The research suggests people will probably take shelter in “even more marginal public spaces”, like further into the woods or in sleeping bags, which are less visible and “even less safe”.

While that may solve the political problem homelessness creates by rendering it invisible, Parsell says it has “huge human and societal consequences, all of which are negative”.

“None of this is about anything to do with solving homelessness,” he says.

Parsell says he is concerned that other councils may adopt the same approach.

“I actually hate tent cities, but we don’t want to go and cause further harm to those people in these tent cities. We want to try and solve their solution with housing that’s affordable. That’s how we solve it,” he says.

On Wednesday and Friday, the City of Gold Coast issued move-on orders for residents of tent cities in Carey Park, James Overell Park, and Matron and Sister Higman Park for the first time. Brisbane’s lord mayor ordered all parks cleared within 24 hours last month and threatened to fine a homeless service provider. The clearance has not taken place.

On Wednesday, a spokesperson for the City of Moreton Bay said this week’s clearance was a “scheduled compliance action” and that all affected had been “offered the opportunity to be referred by council to specialist homelessness services and the department of housing and public works”.

“City of Moreton Bay’s local laws reflect community needs and council has overwhelming support for these,” the spokesperson said.

A Department of Housing and Public Works spokesperson said “the vast majority of people” its team spoke with at the encampment were “willing to accept temporary accommodation and to continue to work with us on long term housing” but did not say how many were actually housed.

“Our team and their government and non-government partners continue to visit rough sleepers and engage with them and offer support,” the spokesperson said.

The council rangers in Eddie Hyland Park knocked off just after 2pm on Thursday and won’t be back to resume the task of demolishing the encampment until next Wednesday. The occupants of five tents that are still standing, but who have been issued one-hour notices, say they expect to be gone by then. The other handful have been told to be out in a fortnight. Few know where they will go next.

Two friends help Ely pack his surviving property into the back of a ute, saying they will let him sleep at their place for the night.

As Guardian Australia leaves, he is searching through the mud where his home used to be.