Written by Andrew Braddock, Greens MLA for Yerrabi.
Over the weekend, the ACT Council of Social Services (ACTCOSS) issued a challenge to candidates running in October’s election to take bold and transformative action to prevent the cost-of-living crisis permanently reshaping our community for the worse.
Canberra is great for many, but there are people doing it tough. Not just a few people, but more and more people – visiting a food bank for the first time in their lives, getting sick because it’s impossible to keep their homes at a safe temperature, putting off visits to the doctor because bulk-billing GPs are seeming to vanish into thin air, struggling to get from A to B because petrol costs so much, and struggling to even afford a place to live.
The cost-of-living crisis is an inequality crisis. It exposes the discomfort many of us feel, alongside the validation, of seeing Canberra listed as one of the world’s most liveable cities.
The cost-of-living crisis seems too big to fix, but there’s so much we can do to make Canberra liveable for all. The best news is, we can get started next month, if you choose to vote for it.
As a Greens representative, I was proud that the election policies we’ve already announced answer ACTCOSS’s calls to urgently build thousands more public homes, immediately help low-income households to switch from gas to electric, and support the community sector to support local people.
The ACT Greens’ focus is on making tangible improvements to your life. We want you to see new services and new opportunities, and to feel the relief their support will provide. To visit one of the free GP clinics we’ll set up across Canberra. To use the extra hours of free care and education we’ll provide to your three- and four-year-olds. To take your local bus once it’s running every 20 minutes on weekdays and every 30 minutes on weekends.
Transport is also responsible for more than 16 per cent of household expenditure and 60 per cent of climate pollution in the ACT. Building ever more suburbs on the outskirts and investing in roads instead of public transport locks people into the expense of owning a car, and makes their whole life less convenient. Building Canberra up as a more compact, convenient city is part of our fight against climate change, the housing crisis, and the cost of living.
The Greens are the change-makers in the ACT. The more of us you put into the Legislative Assembly, the further and faster we can shape Canberra into a truly liveable city for all.
At the National Press Club last week, Australian Greens Leader Adam Bandt pointed out that the other parties can’t even bring themselves to say the words “housing crisis”. How can we trust them to fix it?
Only the Greens have both the ambition to try a different way of doing things and the experience to make it a reality. You can make October a turning point in the cost-of-living crisis, but only if you vote for it.
