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The purpose of this research is to provide a socio-historical and political framework for analysing two small government programs, the Victorian Rental Housing Co-operative Program and the Local Government and Community Housing Program, through which community housing principles were introduced into Australian public housing policy. The context for this research is the failure by the housing rights movement to continue with aims which were politically independent of the ALP, the descent of the movement into "tenure politics", the move to the Right by the ALP after the collapse of Keynesianism as an economic tool, and the possible privatisation of public housing by the Liberal Government through the use of housing vouchers. Links between these themes are postulated. A picture of these events and processes, and the ideologies and motivations of the individuals involved in the public housing policy communities both in Victoria and federally, has been built up through the examination and analysis of contemporary documentation, interviews with key informants and through secondary sources. The major conclusions postulate a relationship between the adoption of small community housing programs in the late 1970s and 1980s and the strategic co-option of the housing rights movement by the ALP, and the current inability of the movement to articulate a housing politics which transcends "tenure politics" at a time when the movement is most severely threatened.