The opposition and social services have each called on the ACT Government to better protect low-income Canberrans facing poverty and homelessness in one of Australia’s most expensive cities.
Elizabeth Lee, leader of the Canberra Liberals, will today urge the Government to provide more support for vulnerable Canberrans. She believes a full review of the ACT Targeted Assistance Strategy, implemented in 2011, would ensure concessions are properly targeted to those in need.
“There are many levers within the purview of the ACT Labor-Greens Government to address poverty, and for too long they have neglected those most vulnerable in the community,” Ms Lee said.
Some of the most vulnerable Canberrans were disproportionately affected by loss of work due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the ACT lockdown, Ms Lee said.
“Families and low-income households in the ACT have for many years been hit hardest by cost-of-living pressures, now exacerbated by the economic impacts of COVID-19.”
The ACT Council of Social Services (ACTCOSS)’s 2021 Cost of Living Report revealed in August that almost a tenth of Canberrans lived below the poverty line: nine per cent, or 38,000 people (including 9,000 children) – more people than before the pandemic began – and low-income Canberrans increasingly could not afford the cost of living. Dramatic increases in the cost of essential goods and housing, combined with low incomes, had left more Canberrans in poverty.
In the past five years, the ACT’s prices for electricity increased by almost 28 per cent, gas by 26 per cent, health by 18.6 per cent, education by 18 per cent, housing by almost 16 per cent, meat and seafood by over 13 per cent, and fruit and vegetables by 11.6 per cent, the report stated.
“Every Canberran is feeling these increases in their household budgets, but for those on low incomes it is absolutely dire,” Ms Lee said.
“This is a direct result of the ACT Labor-Greens Government’s failure to ensure those most vulnerable in our community are able to make ends meet.”
ACTCOSS called at the time for the Federal Government to raise the level of welfare payments, for both the Federal and the ACT Governments to invest in social housing, and for the ACT Government to introduce social justice measures to address poverty, inequality, and the cost of living.
In today’s Budget, the ACT Government will make the largest investment in ACT public housing since 1988: a record $100 million. However, ACTCOSS and the Liberals believe maintaining public housing is long overdue.
ACTCOSS CEO Dr Emma Campbell welcomed other government announcements for public housing maintenance, mental health, homelessness programs, funding for community sector organisations, and suicide prevention measures for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
But in its pre-Budget submission, ACTCOSS called (among other initiatives) for the government to act on key cost of living pressures (including housing, health, transport, education, energy, and ensuring equal access to justice) and to provide more support for community housing providers to deliver 600 affordable rental properties.
“By funding the policy initiatives outlined in our pre-Budget submission, the ACT Government will be able to better protect Canberrans on low incomes and vulnerable people as the community emerges from the COVID-19 health and economic crisis,” Dr Campbell said.
