As the cost of living soars and more Canberrans tumble into poverty, the ACT community sector has called on federal election candidates to state how they would solve these problems.

More income support, housing security, more funding for community services, climate action, and self-determination for First Nations peoples, paid for by taxing the rich, are six priorities identified by the ACT Council of Social Service (ACTCOSS).

• Candidates respond to ACTCOSS call to increase income support
• Housing security a priority for Federal candidates
• ACTCOSS wants more funding for community services
• ACTCOSS calls for fair, fast, inclusive climate action
• ACTCOSS wants justice for First Nations people
• ACTCOSS calls for more taxes on wealthy
• ACTCOSS announces policy priorities for election

“Addressing these points will benefit all of the ACT, ensure no-one is left behind, and make a better society for everybody, including those on higher incomes,” said ACTCOSS CEO Dr Emma Campbell.

Labor’s Dr Andrew Leigh MP, member for Fenner; Greens candidates Dr Tjanara Goreng Goreng (Senate) and Tim Hollo (Canberra); and independents David Pocock and Professor Kim Rubenstein attended a forum hosted by ACTCOSS at the end of last month (Thursday 28 April).

Senator Zed Seselja (Liberals) was invited.

Adam Poulter, deputy CEO of ACTCOSS, considered the event a success. He said candidates and community members listened to each other, and discussed the priority issues that affect people on low incomes and people facing systemic disadvantage in the ACT community.

For Professor Rubenstein, the forum was a demonstration of active citizenship, politicians directly getting community input.

“What we should be doing in a democracy all the time, sitting down and meeting with one another, hearing what is important, drawing from those lived experiences, and then for me, working out the structural frameworks that enable those voices to come through.”

But, she argued, to be an active citizen, people needed social and economic stability to participate in politics and to have a dignified life as a citizen.

She is adamant the ACT needs four senators to truly represent the wider community, and will push for two more if she is elected.

“We’ve only ever had a Labor and a Liberal Senator, which means that the major parties have always taken the ACT for granted. Having an independent in there will change that, but it won’t change it forever.

“To structurally change it forever, we need the four senators, because it will drop the quota [from 33 per cent] to 20 percent, which would mean you have diversity and representation, and the ACT being taken seriously.”

Mr Hollo said that as “somebody deeply committed to participatory politics”, he found “these kinds of conversations engaging and inspiring”. Participants brought up issues from drug and criminal law reform, TAFE, and refugees to childcare access, women’s health, and disability services, but in his view, they were interconnected and interdependent.

“If we can get some of those key settings in place, if we treat people with dignity and with basic human rights across our society, if we tax the most wealthy in this country, we have the resources in this country to provide the services that everybody needs. We can do all the wonderful things that [ACTCOSS is] attempting to do.”

Dr Goreng Goreng said she loved dialogues where people could sit around and yarn. “I come from a culture where we sit in circles; we listen deeply; and we try to take in everything that people say to us, not just mentally, but emotionally and spiritually.”

Mr Pocock said that as an independent, he saw his role as talking to Canberrans and representing them on issues that mattered to them. Participants discussed childcare (and how Australia could learn from Nordic models); women’s health and how the budget overwhelmingly favoured men; and the value of multiculturalism, and why politicians should not use it for fearmongering and electioneering.

“We can actually create the communities and society that we want,” Mr Pocock said.

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