Community service providers react to Tasmanian election promises tackling cost-of-living pressures

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10 hours ago

Bills are going up and wages are sluggish. Money just won't stretch as far as it used to and it's leaving many Tasmanians going without.
The growing cost-of-living issue in Tasmania has been described by some as a crisis.
Now it's a staple of Tasmania's snap election, with both major parties jostling to prove they are the right ones to ease living costs in the state.
But there is no magic wand to fix a situation that has been steadily growing worse for years.
According to the Tasmanian Council of Social Service (TasCOSS), 120,000 Tasmanians are living below the poverty line, meaning they don't have the resources to meet basic needs.
One in five — or 50,000 — Tasmanians are experiencing energy poverty, meaning they can't pay their electricity bills so they ration energy use, go into debt or make cuts to other essentials.
And more than 5,000 people are on the social housing waitlist.
The ABC spoke to several community service organisations about what they wanted to see parties doing to address cost-of-living issues this election.
As the manager of Goodwood Community Centre, a Neighbourhood House in Hobart, Natham Reynolds is at the coalface.
"Our numbers coming through the door are really huge at the moment," Mr Reynolds said.
"Each week we have more than 1,000 people.
"We've just had a Christmas in July lunch where we had 70 people here."
Mr Reynolds has been the manager for more than two years. He says the demand for services increases week on week.
He also said the work is difficult and challenging but worth it.
"It really takes a bit of a toll on you," he said.
"You like to leave your work at home, but you're always thinking when you go home, 'Is there any more I can do or where else can we help?'
"You find you're always trying to think of new ideas or different support systems to help people, even once you finish work."
Simone Zell is the chief executive of Neighbourhood Houses Tasmania. She said there needed to be a fundamental shift in how we address cost of living.
"So that we have priorities that are about supporting people to have access to the basics," Ms Zell said.
Ms Zell said access to earlier intervention when it comes to healthcare was crucial.
"We need to make sure that people can have access to healthcare where they are so they are not in those more crisis situations and they are not presenting at hospitals," she said.
The Salvation Army's Amelia Natoli said the issue for many in the community sector was ensuring adequate funding for existing programs.
"For many of our programs we're on the same level of funding that we might have got five or 10 years ago, and everyone's aware that the cost of doing anything has gone up," Ms Natoli said.
"For us, we're actually not able to deliver the same level of service for the same price as we could five or 10 years ago.
She said without increased funding the organisation could not "keep the lights on" at its family and domestic violence refuge or at its alcohol and other drugs space.
"But until we can actually just keep the current services running at the level that they need, it's really hard for us as an organisation to ask, 'Can we have further funding to be able to add another six beds at our family violence refuge?' Because we just don't know that we'll be able to staff it and keep everything running," Ms Natoli said.
Loaves and Fishes chief executive Andrew Hillier said one-in-five Tasmanians were facing food insecurity, and innovative solutions were needed.
He said he wanted to see the parties embrace a food-systems approach, bringing together different organisations to deal with issues.
"Organisations like Eat Well Tas that are focused on education, Neighbourhood Houses that distribute food and … farmers who grow and in some cases their food gets rejected."
Mr Hillier said the Liberal government held a roundtable before the election was called, but it needed to go beyond facilitating discussions — he said the ideas needed resources.
"[We want to make] sure we've got markets and ways of buying food, creating alternative markets for local, small and medium farmers and producers, so that food can be available at lower cost."
He also said it was essential to support the grassroots community organisations on the frontline delivering support.
Labor has been coming out hard on cost of living, offering everything from a price cap on electricity prices (they won't be able to rise more than 2.5 per cent) to freezing car registrations for a year, which will save the average person $15 a year. Apprentices would be eligible for half-price registrations.
The party also has a policy to allow people to pay all government-issued bills monthly at no extra charge compared to annual payment, including car registrations.
It would invest in Loaves and Fishes' food strategy, providing it with $5 million over five years.
The Liberals have an energy-saver policy in place: the renewable energy dividend. Most recently it resulted in $60 shaved off Tasmanian power bills.
The Liberals' big cost-of-living promise this campaign is TasInsure, a Tasmanian-owned insurance company the party claims would result in Tasmanians saving up to $250 a year on insurance bills, while businesses would save up to 20 per cent.
The party has also announced half-price bus fares would be extended for another year.
The Greens have a whole raft of policies designed to address cost-of-living pressures, including putting a stop to "unreasonable" rent rises and introducing means-based fines.
Community sector leaders are generally positive about the policies announced during the campaign so far, but the feeling is most pledges do not go far enough.
Ms Zell said some of the policies could be better targeted at vulnerable Tasmanians.
The Salvation Army's Amelia Natoli said even a $15 discount for those who are struggling would provide relief.
"I do think the impact it would have if it is particularly focused on those individuals that we work with could certainly be quite high," she said.
"We really need to look at how we keep our most vulnerable front of mind."
Ms Zell said in the end, many of the policies were just "tinkering around the edges".
"I really hope that in these last two weeks [of the election campaign] that we actually see some brave vision around 'let's actually do things differently'," she said.
"We do have so many Tasmanians right now really struggling and we're looking at how we can shift that situation so that we can see people's lives being changed."
To see more of the parties' promises to address cost of living and more, go to the ABC's election promise tracker.