The Raise the Rate for Good campaign is driven by people take action in their community. Together we build community support, persuade politicians, and help shift the narrative around income support.
If you're new to the campaign, we've compiled all the resources you need to start taking action in your community.
Reports from ACOSS
“It’s not enough”: why more is needed to lift people out of poverty (Sep 2023)
Trigger warning: this report refers to suicide
In the May 2023 Budget, the Federal Government announced payments will increase by $20 a week – a figure well below that called for by ACOSS, lived experience advocates, the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee and many others. This increase, along with routine CPI indexation, will take effect on 20 September, increasing the daily rate of JobSeeker from $50 to $54 a day (increasing by $28 a week).
“It’s hell”: how inadequate income support is causing harm (March 2023)
Australia’s working-age income support payments are completely inadequate to meet the cost of essential goods and services like food, rent and energy. The large price increases we have witnessed over the past 12 months have deepened the inadequacy of these payments. People on the lowest incomes have nothing left in their meagre budgets and are experiencing deprivation and financial stress on a large scale.
Reports from the Poverty and Inequality Project
Poverty in Australia 2023: Who is affected (March 2023)
This report uses data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) to identify the groups facing the highest risk of poverty; and the groups of people most likely to be living in poverty. It rounds out the story of poverty provided in our previous Poverty in Australia report, Poverty in Australia 2022: A snapshot, which provided an overview of the numbers of people in poverty in Australia; and our most recent report Australian Experiences of Poverty, which took a qualitative, experienced-focused approach to relate the experiences of people in poverty during 2020-21.
Australia’s working-age income support payments are completely inadequate to meet the cost of essential goods and services like food, rent and energy. The large price increases we have witnessed over the past 12 months have deepened the inadequacy of these payments. People on the lowest incomes have nothing left in their meagre budgets and are experiencing deprivation and financial stress on a large scale.
Poverty in Australia 2022: A snapshot (Oct 2022)
This report provides a brief overview of levels of poverty – overall and among adults and children – following the recent release of Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data on household incomes in 2019-20. It examines trends in poverty since 1999, and through each quarter of 2019-20. While it is unusual to measure changes in poverty on a three-monthly rather than annual basis, it was a very unusual year.
In the second quarter of 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns triggered a sharp recession and the government introduced unprecedented public income supports to keep household and business incomes afloat. As we argued in a previous Poverty and Inequality Report released in 2021, these two factors worked in opposite directions: the recession and widespread job losses increased poverty while the COVID income supports reduced it.