A baby has been found dead in a tent in regional New South Wales, prompting renewed calls to address homelessness across regional Australia.
Police were called to a homeless encampment near Wagga beach on the Murrumbidgee River on Saturday, where they found a 37-year-old woman with two infants, one of whom was deceased.
The surviving baby and the mother were taken to hospital, where the infant remained in a critical condition on Monday afternoon, authorities said.
Police said there were “no suspicious circumstances”, while local media reported the woman had recently given birth.
Local councillor Richard Foley said the death was a tragedy and showed the housing crisis had gotten “out of hand”.
“We’ve now had a death of a young baby, a newborn baby, in a tent,” he said.
“A newborn child is deceased, and another one is in a serious condition. The mother was escorted to hospital on the weekend, which is just unacceptable.”
Foley said the river encampment had grown bigger each year, as the city of Wagga Wagga saw a substantial rise in people sleeping rough. In 2024, a local council paper indicated there were 257 homeless people in the area, a 71% increase from eight years earlier.
“Let’s face it, we’ve seen this type of thing across all cities,” Foley said.
“But it’s growing in number out here. And the rental availability in this city is beyond a crisis. This is an emergency.”
The rental vacancy rate in the Riverina was at a record low of 0.6% in January 2025, according to PRD Real Estate.
Foley was working on a fresh report into how many rough sleepers there were in the region and called on the state government to “step up and start doing something”.
There was a lack of public housing in the area, he said. While the state government had promised to build more social housing, those dwellings would only replace the exisiting stock, Foley said.
“A line of the sand has got to be drawn. People are sick and tired of the political class, which is just totally disconnected.”
Comment was being sought from the NSW homelessness minister, Rose Jackson.
