Bill Shorten helped Australian track stars Joseph Deng and Peter Bol secure a home after long search

Australia’s 800m record holder Joseph Deng and 2016 Olympian Peter Bol were sleeping on couches after months of struggling to find a home … until Labor leader Bill Shorten was forced to step in.

Australian 800m record holder Joseph Deng (left) and training partner Peter Bol with Opposition Leader Bill Shorten. Picture: Alex Coppel

Midway through last year Joseph Deng became the fastest 800m runner in Australian history after breaking a record which had stood for 50 years.

His unique story captured headlines given he’d been born in a Kenyan refugee camp after his mother left South Sudan to escape war with the family settling in Australia when he was aged six.

When the mini-publicity storm passed Deng and his training partner Peter Bol, another South Sudanese refugee, started looking for a house to rent.

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Deng, 20, had been sleeping on his uncle’s couch since moving from Queensland to Melbourne a year earlier.

The pair put in a few applications and never heard anything back. The same thing happened the next month. And the next month.

By November they were visiting houses and filling in online application forms almost every second day but all to no avail.

Australia 800m record holder Joseph Deng (left) and training partner Peter Bol with Opposition Leader Bill Shorten in Melbourne. Picture: Alex Coppel

With each rejection, it was becoming more and more clear the reason why they remained homeless.

Bol was frustrated but not totally surprised given the issues surrounding Sudanese gangs and crime in Melbourne.

“We have seen a lot going on at the moment,” he said. “It’s pretty easy to generalise so we kind of weren’t really surprised at that part.

“But what was surprising was that Joe went to the Commonwealth Games last year, he broke the Australian record from 50 years ago and I went to the Olympics in 2016, yet we are still kind of in the same category.”

At last month’s Zatopek:10 meeting, their manager James Templeton approached Athletics Australia president Mark Arbib, the former Labor Senator, for assistance.

A couple of days later the phone rang and it was the Federal Opposition Leader Bill Shorten. He was horrified about the situation and keen to help.

Peter Bol and Joseph Deng in action during the 800m at a IAAF Diamond League meeting in Stockholm.

Shorten, who holds the seat of Maribyrnong, put Deng and Bol in touch with a couple of local real estate agents and then kept in regular contact with Templeton for updates on the house search.

A couple of days after Christmas, a four-bedroom house in Niddrie was secured.

“Getting a house will really help us, it’s massive,” Deng said.

“I’ve been living with my uncle since I moved here in 2017 and I’ve been on the couch the whole time.

“It doesn’t really bother me, I think it would affect other people more but this is obviously going to be better.”

Shorten, who is regular jogger, had previously met Deng and Bol at the North Melbourne Grand Final Breakfast and was saddened to hear about their plight.

“It’s crazy, we want these guys to represent Australia at world championships and the Olympic Games yet they are left in the situation where they basically have to couch surf,” Shorten said.

“It just goes to show that sometimes people are afraid of what they don’t know.

Joseph Deng, Peter Bol and Bill Shorten in Melbourne. Picture: Alex Coppel

“The rap that the South Sudanese community gets … there are bad eggs in every community.

“A couple of hundred years ago there were some bad English people that were sent out here and some bad Irish people but thousands of other English and Irish people made this a great country.

“I think we should never confuse issues of crime with just stereotyping a whole group of people and these two athletes are elite athletes who we’re fortunate have chosen to call Australia home.

“There are far more success stories than failures, just like every other community.”

Shorten praised his local community for stepping up to help the two rising stars of the track.

“I think most people would say, if they heard about the situation, they’d say that’s ridiculous,” he said. “I just think common sense kicked in.

“The local real estates were excellent once you say, ‘Hey, don’t look at the paperwork have a look at the person’ and then all of a sudden there were no problems.”

Deng and Bol will kick-off their domestic season in Newcastle later in the month before leaving for Europe to compete in a series of indoor meets.