20 June 2022 Article by Francis Sullivan, as published in Eureka Street Despite last week’s decision by the Fair Work Commission to push up the national minimum wage by 5.2 per cent, millions of Australians, in all parts of the country, will continue to live in poverty and on survival wages. The facts are that the...
6 June 2022 Member services within the Catholic Social Services Australia network are working overtime as freezing cold weather hits the eastern seaboard and forces homeless people off the streets. “Life on the streets is hard enough at the best of times but when the temperature plummets people sleeping rough need a safe place to sleep,...
22 May 2022 Australia’s most underprivileged and disadvantaged have something to look forward to with the election of Anthony Albanese as Prime Minister and Labor as the new Government, one of Australia's leading social services organisations said today. The Chair of Catholic Social Services Australia, Francis Sullivan, said today that while the new Government faces huge...
13 May 2022 Two of Australia’s most marginal seats, Bass and Braddon in Tasmania, suffer among the nation’s highest levels of persistent disadvantage, according to major research undertaken by Catholic Social Services Australia and the Australian National University. The research undertaken in 2020, shows that in the towns and regional areas of Bass and Braddon the...
18 April 2022 Prime Minister Morrison has today given the clearest indication yet of how little the Coalition cares for Australia’s marginalised and disadvantaged when he dismissed the Social Services portfolio as secondary to Defence, Treasury, Finance, Foreign Affairs and Health. Mr Morrison made the comments this afternoon when he announced current Families and Social Services...
14 April 2022 The decision by Labor not to review the JobSeeker payment ahead of its first budget if it wins the May federal election is disappointing, according to one of Australia's peak social services groups. Francis Sullivan, Chair of Catholic Social Services Australia, said the decision is a real blow for 1.5 million people struggling...
10 April 2022 The entrenched poverty, loss of opportunity and inequality that nearly 3 million Australia live with every day has not been adequately addressed by either of the major political parties as we enter the official election campaign, according to the head of one of Australia’s leading social service groups. Mr Francis Sullivan, Chair of...
5 April 2022 Article by Francis Sullivan, as published in the Daily Telegraph Last week’s budget speaks loud and clear to where the Coalition government sees itself and who it needs to talk to in the lead-up to the May general election.It is a budget that puts politics before fairness and the “comfortable middle” before the...
14 February 2022 As Australia faces the reality of Omicron ripping through our communities with devastating consequences for both public health and the economy, we need the Federal Government to provide free and accessible rapid antigen tests (RATs) for the entire community. Rapid Antigen Tests are an essential tool in managing this pandemic and stopping the...
7 February 2022 One of Australia’s peak social services groups, Catholic Social Services Australia (CSSA), has supported calls for rooftop solar panels to be installed on Australia’s public housing stock. A joint report by the University of NSW and the Australian Photovoltaic Institute says adding solar panels to the nation’s 440,000 social housing dwellings could save...
