As Australians continue to face the pressures of the cost-of-living crisis, last month’s passage of the Strengthening the Safety Net Bill signals “a step in the right direction” say advocates for a fairer social security system.

Backed by Australian Communities Foundation’s Impact Fund and 16 other ACF Named Funds since 2018, the Raise the Rate for Good campaign has been leading calls on the Federal Government to lift JobSeeker and related payments.

“Through the campaign, we are supporting people on social security to speak up and to have politicians deliver what’s needed: social security above the poverty line,” says Dr Cassandra Goldie, CEO at the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS), the organisation behind the campaign.

The Strengthening the Safety Net Bill will see JobSeeker payments brought to $56 a day (up from $50) once the increase and routine indexation come into effect in September.

While ACOSS has welcomed the announcement, as well as the broadening of eligibility for the Parenting Payment, the increase is well below the $76 a day (current Aged Pension rate) that ACOSS has been calling for (or the 90% of the Aged Pension suggested by the government-appointed, independent Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee).

“While any increase is a step in the right direction, this marginally increased JobSeeker rate is still a poverty payment and will not stop people going without essentials like food and heating,” ACOSS CEO Dr Cassandra Goldie said in a statement. “We remain committed to working with members of parliament to secure further increases to income support.”

To celebrate this small step forward, we’re sharing this Q&A from when we caught up with the ACOSS team last year. In this conversation, Dr Goldie shares details of the campaign’s impact and what support from the Impact Fund community has meant for this important work.

Tell us about the Australian Council of Social Service and the Raise the Rate for Good campaign.

ACOSS is the representative of the community organisation sector. Our core purpose is to end poverty and to support people who experience disadvantage, and it brings together with our state and territory bodies, about 4,000 community organisations.

Through the Raise the Rate for Good campaign, we are supporting people who are needing to rely on social security to speak up and to have politicians deliver what’s needed. Social security needs to be above the poverty line and we need enough social and affordable housing so that people have a safe place to live.

What we know is that people on low incomes are going without food, medicines and really essential parts of what it means to live a life with dignity.

The Impact Fund community has provided ongoing support for both the Raise the Rate campaign and the accompanying research project. How have these two projects worked together?

The Impact Fund support has helped transform the way that ACOSS is able to support people directly affected through the Raise the Rate for Good campaign – to be able to get support for being in the media, to be able to tell their own story, to be in political meetings, speaking for themselves, and to be part of the advocacy.

Through the Poverty and Inequality Partnership with the University of New South Wales, the Impact Fund support has helped us to explain to the Australian community who we are as a society, to understand who is going without, what incomes are changing, who is doing well and who is not. We need to work with the facts.

Tell us about the campaign’s impact so far.

Through the Raise the Rate for Good campaign, we have firstly delivered the first real increase in social security for people of working age in 30 years. It is nowhere near enough but it gives us great hope that the campaign is absolutely heading in the right direction, continuing to lift up the visibility and support for people directly affected to seek the changes we need.

It is really significant that one of the most important things that happened in 2020 as part of the pandemic response was the doubling of JobSeeker. I have no doubt that if we didn’t have the Raise the Rate campaign leading into the pandemic, it was much less likely that we would have had that kind of response from the Federal Government. Because of all the work we had done to demonstrate the value of increasing social security, that’s exactly what they did. Our job now is to keep going.

How important is the ongoing support you receive from funders like the Impact Fund community?

When the Impact Fund was created in 2017, it was perfect timing for ACOSS. We had looked at what we needed to do differently, to be a part of transforming Australian society to end poverty and disadvantage.

We knew that we needed to change what we were doing and support people directly affected to be driving the advocacy and the strategy to lift the adequacy of incomes for those who have the least. The Impact Fund came along and backed us in at the right time.

The Impact Fund has been a powerful demonstration of the value of philanthropy being involved in advocacy. The Raise the Rate for Good campaign is a perfect example of that. The dollars that have been provided from the Impact Fund to our campaign have been very important, and what they have delivered is an increase of $3 billion per annum into our safety net as an Australian society. That demonstrates that you can fund direct services, you can provide charitable responses, but if you back advocacy, you can really change Australian society.