February 2023
Nearly 20,000 refugees set to apply for permanent residency
13 February 2023 Catholic Social Services Australia has welcomed today’s announcement that the Albanese Government will provide a permanent visa pathway for existing Temporary Protection Visa (TPV) and Safe Haven Enterprise Visa (SHEV) holders. This is in line with the Government’s 2022 election commitment and will give some 19,000 refugees the right to apply for Australian citizenship...
January 2023
May Federal Budget looks to address entrenched disadvantage
30 January 2023 Catholic Social Services Australia has welcomed reports the Albanese May Budget will focus on entrenched disadvantage in the most vulnerable Australian communities. In a podcast with the Guardian Australia and a major essay published today in the Monthly magazine Treasurer Jim Chalmers says he is working with the Social Services Minister, Amanda Rishworth, to make...
Albanese Government makes good start for the dispossessed but much more to be done
27 January 2023 Article by Francis Sullivan, as published in Pearls and Irritations In 1996 Paul Keating said, “when you change the Government, you change the country”. Nothing could be truer as the Albanese Government goes about implementing a far reaching, some might say radical agenda, particularly as it relates to many of Australia’s most marginal and disadvantaged. Since the...
New pilot plan to help people living with disabilities get into the workforce
9 January 2023 The Federal Government and the Business Council of Australia (BCA) have signed an agreement to expand job opportunities for Australians living with disabilities as part of a broader plan to create 250,000 new jobs. Minister for Social Services, Amanda Rishworth, says the new disability employment pilot will improve employment outcomes for people with disability. “There...
December 2022
Keating’s Redfern speech three decades later
16 December 2022 Article by Francis Sullivan, as published in Pearls and Irritations On the 30th anniversary of former Prime Minister Paul Keating's historic Redfern Speech, First Nations Australians are still waiting for its articulated vision to be realised. Keating's speech was a watershed moment in the sorry history of Indigenous reconciliation. Never before, and only once or twice since,...
Thousands of families struggling to meet next week’s rents as a grim Christmas approaches
13 December 2022 Article by Francis Sullivan, as published in The Daily Telegraph As the Reserve Bank lifts interest rates to their highest levels in a decade, the big losers aren't just homeowners but also the hundreds of thousands of low-income renters who are paying more than half of their earnings just trying to keep a roof over...
Power bills for low-income earners to fall after Commonwealth and state governments agree to subsidies
10 December 2022 Millions of people on income support and welfare payments will have their power bills cut under a $1.5 billion plan announced on Friday by Prime Minister Albanese. It is expected power prices will start to fall by mid-next year, after the Federal government struck a deal with the states on a package including discounted...
Nearly a fifth of low-income earners paying more than half their income in private rent
7 December 2022 Some 185,000, or nearly a fifth of low-income private renters, are paying more than half of their household income in rent, well above the accepted maximum tolerable measure of 30 per cent, according to a major new report from leading housing services organisation, Launch Housing. Launch Housing’s 2018 - 2022 Homeless Monitor, says this...
