Raising the age of criminal responsibility and keeping kids in community
Raise the Age is a campaign for the federal, state and territory governments to do what’s right and change the laws to raise the age, so children aged 10 to 13 years are not sent to prison.
Issue
Everyone knows that children do best when they are supported, nurtured and loved. But across Australia, children as young as 10 can be arrested by police, charged with an offence, hauled before a court and locked away in youth prisons.
In just one year across Australia close to 600 children aged 10 to 13 years were locked up and thousands more were hauled through the criminal legal system. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are disproportionately impacted by these laws and pushed into prison cells at even higher rates, accounting for 65 per cent of these younger children in prisons.
When children this young are forced through a criminal legal process at such a formative age, they can suffer immense harm – to their health, wellbeing and future. Ten year old kids belong in schools and playgrounds, not placed in handcuffs, held in watchhouses or locked in prisons away from their families, community and culture. Governments can change this by raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility to at least 14 years.
Response
Raise the Age is leading a national campaign, raising awareness of the issue and advocating for an increase to the minimum age of criminal responsibility.
The campaign has been developed by a coalition of legal, medical and social justice organisations, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community owned organisations. This group includes National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services, Australian Indigenous Doctors Association, Change the Record, Human Rights Law Centre, Law Council of Australia, Amnesty International Australia, Australian Medical Association, Royal Australasian College of Physicians and Public Health Association of Australia.
Protecting public interest journalism
Established in 2018, the Public Interest Journalism Initiative (PIJI) is investigating a sustainable future for public interest journalism. PIJI envisages a sustainable and diverse public interest journalism landscape in Australia. Through research, the organisation helps move Australia towards achieving this vision.
Issue
The news media landscape in Australia is experiencing an unprecedented industry disruption, resulting in news media closures and industry consolidation. Those shifts have raised concerns about media diversity and access to public interest journalism, particularly in regional and rural Australia.
Response
PIJI was established to build awareness of the role of public interest journalism and the threat to it; research options to address that threat; and lobby government to support the industry to transition to a new, sustainable model of operation. In collaboration with the Susan McKinnon Foundation, the Impact Fund provided funding to support PIJI’s initial setup, launch and ongoing operation.
Disclosure: Eric Beecher, Chair of Australian Communities Foundation, is also on the Board of Public Interest Journalism Initiative.
Investing in social and affordable housing
Everybody’s Home is a national campaign to fix the housing crisis. It was launched in 2018 by a coalition of housing, homelessness and welfare organisations to achieve the change needed so everybody has a safe and decent place to live.
Issue
Every night more than 116,000 Australians are homeless. Over the past decades, rents have been growing faster than incomes, particularly for low income earners. That means more people paying more rent than they can afford, and more people left without a home at all. Homeownership has been declining for decades as well, particularly among young people. The Covid-19 crisis supercharged homelessness, with tens of thousands more Australians losing their homes.
Across Australia home prices and rents are skyrocketing, pushing more people into housing stress. Our shrinking proportion of social housing means there is nowhere to go for families pushed out of the rental market.
Response
Everybody’s Home is working together to call on Australian governments to bring balance back to the system.
The Impact Fund supported the campaign in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, as more Australians were being forced into homelessness. But this moment also presented an opportunity: the prospect of achieving a significant social housing investment is also greater now that social housing construction can contribute to economic stimulus, more so than at any time since the Global Financial Crisis.
Everybody’s Home is continuing to campaign for investment in social housing that so everybody has a place to cal lhome.
Shifting the politics of the recovery towards climate and quality jobs
Jobs, Climate, Justice is a campaign led by 350.org Australia in collaboration with trade unions and the climate movement, seeking to shift the politics of the economic recovery after Covid towards quality jobs and a renewable future.
Issue
At the height of Australia’s first wave of Covid-19, the National Covid-19 Coordination Commission was established, including a Manufacturing Taskforce to lead a ‘gas-fired recovery’ out of the current crisis. The Taskforce’s proposed recovery ignores the multitude of research from both climate NGOs and the trade union movement that demonstrates investing in high-quality jobs in renewable energy and sustainable manufacturing is the best path out of this crisis. If the proposed push for public subsidies for gas is successful, it will be a disaster for the climate, for Traditional Owners fighting to protect their land, for workers who deserve high-quality employment.
Response
350.org Australia has been working with trade unions and the climate movement to develop a collaborative campaign – Jobs, Climate Justice – and shift the politics of the economic recovery away from fossil fuel subsidies and towards quality jobs in renewable energy and sustainable manufacturing. This work fits within broader efforts by the trade union movement and climate NGOs to influence economic recovery spending, but adds a necessary intervention: finding common cause across the demands of organised labour and the demands of the climate movement, with justice at the centre.
Highlighting the links between climate and health
The Climate and Health Alliance (CAHA) is a coalition of healthcare stakeholders who work together to see the threat to human health from climate change and ecological degradation addressed through prompt policy action. The membership of CAHA includes organisations and individuals from across the health sector, with organisations representing healthcare professionals from medicine, nursing, public health, social work and psychology, as well as healthcare service providers, research and academic institutions, and health consumers.
Issue
The Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated the potential for public health emergencies to cause dramatic disruption. It followed the unprecedented bushfires and dangerous smoke pollution that made the links between climate change and people’s health starkly obvious. Both of these events revealed the increasing vulnerability of the Australian community and our health system – unless we take action.
Response
Covid-19 has also highlighted the critical role of the health and medical professionals in preparing us for and responding to these crises. The Impact Fund supported CAHA at the start of the pandemic as it worked to seize an opportunity to highlight the intensifying climate crisis, which is increasingly taking lives and harming people’s health.
CAHA is continuing on its mission to build a powerful health sector movement for climate action and sustainable healthcare.
Protecting Australian species from extinction
The Invasive Species Council (ISC) campaigns for better laws and protections for our native plants and animals from weeds, pests and feral invaders. ISC was formed in 2002 to seek stronger laws, policies and programs to keep Australian biodiversity safe from weeds, feral animals and other invaders.
Issue
Australia is currently facing an extinction crisis with more than 1,770 species now threatened or endangered, and invasive species are the number one cause. Cats and foxes have driven 22 native mammals to extinction across central Australia and a new wave of decline, largely from cats, is taking place across northern Australia. Species will continue to decline and become extinct without a strong national system for abating the threats of invasive species as well as those posed by habitat destruction. Australia’s current system for identifying key threatening processes and coordinating national threat abatement efforts fails to recognise and address many major threats (under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act 1999). Moreover, less than half of the threats that are recognised have resulted in adequate abatement progress.
Response
The Threats to Nature project works with environmental NGOs, policy experts and scientists to develop a package of institutional, legal and policy reforms that would engender a more concerted focus on abating major threats. With the EPBC Act under independent review across 2019-20, the ISC has advocated for a reformed EPBC Act that facilitates policy changes to strengthen the system that prepares abatement plans, rather than trying to save threatened species one by one.
Improving consumer influence in policy decisions for climate resilient homes
More and more Australians are living in sustainable homes that not only use much less energy and water, but are also comfortable, healthy and affordable to live in.
But many more live in inefficient homes that are cold and damp in winter, dangerously hot in summer or cost a fortune in bills to keep at a healthy temperature. Energy waste also adds to Australia’s carbon emissions, while climate change impacts such as heatwaves will increasingly expose vulnerable people living in poor quality housing to serious health risks.
The Climate Resilient Homes project is a national coalition of community, consumer and environment groups calling for action to raise the energy and water performance of all Australian homes – new and existing.
Issue
In Australia, construction and use of the built environment accounts for 45% of annual energy consumption and 18% of Australia’s carbon footprint. New housing construction accounts for much of this, making improving housing sustainability critical to addressing climate change. Building codes and regulatory frameworks have traditionally been developed between government and industry with little or no consumer input. They do not adequately incorporate or incentivise energy efficiency in residential home construction resulting in poor energy efficiency and higher household running costs.
Response
Renew is spearheading an innovative collaboration between environmental and anti-poverty organisations, including the Australian Council of Social Service, to advocate for stronger adoption of energy efficient housing and developed a consumer advocacy strategy to promote residential energy efficiency in new and existing homes.
Providing insights into poverty and inequality in Australia
The Poverty and Inequality Partnership is a five year research and impact collaboration to sharpen the national focus on poverty and inequality in Australia. The partnership monitors trends in poverty and inequality over time, explores drivers, and develops solutions to sharpen the focus and stimulate action to tackle these policy challenges.
Issue
A combination of factors contribute to poverty – a lack of money or resources for the basic needs of life – and inequality – unequal distribution of income and wealth. These factors include:
- Australia’s social security system: Our system for supporting people does not provide enough help to prevent people from slipping into poverty. Currently, the system is not working because the rates of JobSeeker and Youth Allowance have not been increased in real terms for 25 years, while the cost of living, especially housing, has risen dramatically.
- Unemployment and underemployment: There are not enough jobs available for people who are looking for paid work; and there are people who, while employed, need more paid work. There is only one job available for every eight people looking for paid work, and often those jobs require specific skills or knowledge about new technologies.
- Increased costs of living, especially housing: The cost of housing and essential services is increasing. We all need a home. None of us can go about our lives, raise a family, go to work or stay healthy, without a stable and safe place to call home. Our housing system should make sure everyone has a secure, safe roof over their head.
Response
Through its research, the Partnership is demonstrating the role played by public policy – especially social security and taxation, but also housing and employment policy, among other areas – in determining the rate of poverty and inequality in Australia.
ACOSS has developed a suite of policy reform proposals to address to reduce poverty and inequality in Australia in the following areas: