Pas Forgione reports that, after nearly three and a half years in office, South Australian Labor has barely made a dent in the stateβs acute housing shortage.
Pas Forgione
The grassroots campaign to increase welfare payments for the unemployed received a boost on June 12 from the national body that represents councils across Australia.
The Australian Local Government Association (ALGA) overwhelmingly voted in support of a motion calling on the federal government to increase the Newstart Allowance, the Centrelink payment for unemployed people.
Across South Australia, local governments are sticking up for residents who are out of work and living in poverty. This is part of a grassroots campaign being led by the with support from SA Council of Social Service and Uniting Communities.
Job agencies are the government-funded organisations tasked with helping unemployed people find work.
There is growing evidence suggesting this βhelpβ consists of the following:
It would surprise the federal Coalition government β that assumes we dislike welfare recipients as much as it does β that one of its biggest problems at the start of the year is the Centrelink debt fiasco.
Over the past six months, 170,000 people received debt notices from Centrelink, with the number gradually rising to 20,000 a week.
By comparison, .
As part of this year's Anti-Poverty Week, a conference in South Australia A looked at how a lack of jobs is changing the nature of unemployment into an increasingly long-term phenomenon.
Low-income people, activists, community workers and others will gather in Adelaide on October 21 and 22 forΒ , a two-day Anti-Poverty Week conference.
The event β organised by Anti-Poverty Network SA, a grassroots group composed of welfare recipients struggling with poverty and joblessness β promises to be one of the largest Anti-Poverty Week events in the country.
About 80 people attended a fiery, standing-room only, public forum on unemployment, hosted by Anti-Poverty Network SA on June 18 in Adelaide's northern suburbs.
In a twist to the standard election fare, candidates were required to spend the first half of the event listening to the honest, insightful testimony and views of jobseekers, sole parents, aged and disability pensioners, and others with direct, lived experience of being out of work and being poor, before participating in a Q&A.
In the lead-up to the federal election, talk of balancing the budget, jobs and growth are centre.
Amid rising unemployment and job insecurity, single parents continue to face both a job market unforgiving of parenting responsibilities and parenting payments that have been consistently attacked and eroded β framed by the false narrative of providing incentives to return to work and finding necessary budget savings.
An extraordinary, radical experiment in welfare policy will begin on March 15 in the small town of Ceduna and several remote Aboriginal communities in south-western South Australia.
More than 100 people attended a heated community meeting in Ceduna, South Australia, on November 7, to hear Assistant Minister for Social Services Alan Tudge discuss the Healthy Welfare Card.
Anti-Poverty Network SA hosted the βStand Up! Speak Out!β conference in Adelaide on October 16 and 17. The grassroots gathering of welfare recipients, community workers and activists from South Australian and Victorian groups was part of Anti-Poverty Week.
One of the highlights was the βWar On The Poorβ session. Rob Graham from ΒιΆΉΣ³» Weekly and Pas Forgione from Anti-Poverty Network SA spoke to Owen Bennett from the Australian Unemployed Workers' Union and Kerry Arch from the Australian United Sole Parents Network about the attacks on welfare recipients.
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