Page 1655 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 9 May 2018
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More importantly, I support the call on the government to continue to invest in expanding our core community, social, health, education, emergency services and transport services to cater for a growing and thriving city. We must not forget those who are doing it tough right now. This is especially relevant today after a federal budget last night which did nothing, absolutely nothing, for people at the bottom economically.
We must ensure that our rollout of services always takes into account the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in our community—those who do not have a secure roof over their head or a job or the supports they need to live their lives. In the past few weeks we have seen reports from Anglicare and ACTCOSS about poverty and homelessness. There are consistent and loud calls for additional investment in social and affordable housing. We must hear these calls and act upon them.
It is clear from the national ACOSS raise the rate campaign that those living on benefits are living below the poverty line. It is important to note that ACOSS and ACTCOSS both calculate the number of people living below the poverty line based on their income after housing costs. Therefore, for all those people on low incomes not able to access social housing and affordable rental accommodation options in the ACT—those spending more than a third of their income on housing—this has a direct impact on their available spending for other essentials like food, transport and household energy bills. This means these people are contributing the vast majority of their income—and in some cases more than their actual income—to growing our local economy. They are spending it on rent and on essential food. But their money does not go to things like meals and restaurants, theatre tickets or international flights.
The recent ACTCOSS report shows that in the ACT nearly 35,000 people are living below the poverty line. That includes more than one in 10 children, a number close to 8,900. We should all think about that for a moment—more than one in 10 of the kids in the ACT, in our schools, in our services, are living in poverty.
As ACT Council of Social Services head Susan Helyar said in the Canberra Times this week, people are forced to choose between keeping a roof over their head, food on the table, buying medicine and turning on the heater. This should not be the case in the ACT. This is not relative poverty whereby some people, compared to the affluence of the large proportion of public servants and other people in Canberra, do not do as well. This is absolute poverty where people do not have enough food and they do not have safe shelter, and this is in the ACT now.
As we all know, our average household income and our cost of living are relatively high compared to other capital cities, and this makes the gap between rich and poor even bigger in practice and harder to negotiate if you are on the wrong side of it. Often it is easy to ignore the numbers, but when there are examples like the St John’s Care food pantry running out of food for vulnerable individuals and families—the worst situation they say they have had for more than 15 years—we cannot and should not gloss over the data. It was reported in the Canberra Times this week that the number of people using the service has jumped by 25 per cent in the past year. As well as dwindling food supplies, they have had to cut back electricity vouchers from $50 to $25 due to increased demand, and this is before winter.
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