Advocacy Publications

ACTCOSS’s 2025–26 comprehensive budget statement arrives at a critical moment. Too many Canberrans can’t afford basic essentials amid relentless cost-of-living pressures, wage growth below inflation growth, and a deepening housing crisis. For people on low incomes, the situation is untenable: the public housing waitlist is so overstretched that only the highest-need cases are housed, while […]

ACTCOSS has provided feedback to the ACT Inspector of Custodial Services through the Healthy Prison Revew 2025 process to highlight critical systemic failures within the Alexander Maconochie Centre (AMC). Drawing on consultations with community organisations, lived experience advocates, and service providers, the submission outlines urgent reforms needed to improve safety, dignity, rehabilitation, and reintegration for […]

ACTCOSS is gathering evidence to advocate for better funding and workforce support in the lead-up to the 2025-26 Budget. We know the Government is going to be making hard funding choices this year, and we want to make sure that the community sector’s value is promoted as effectively as possible. This survey will help ACTCOSS […]

Too many Canberrans can’t afford basic essentials amid relentless cost-of-living pressures, stagnating wages, and a deepening housing crisis. For people on low incomes, the situation is untenable: the public housing waitlist is so overstretched that only the highest-need cases are housed, while the rental market remains out of reach, forcing impossible trade-offs between food, healthcare, […]

This factsheet provides an overview of factors driving energy hardship nationally and in the ACT. It also contains recommendations aimed at addressing energy hardship. 

Incarceration is expensive, ineffective and in most instances doesn’t leave our community safer. While the ACT Government has promoted justice reinvestment as a policy approach, too many Canberrans remain trapped in a cycle of harmful and costly incarceration. To break this cycle and build safer communities, the ACT Government needs to further reinvest away from […]

The ACT Government has taken nation-leading steps toward responding to drug use as a health issue rather than a justice issue, but more needs to be done to minimise the harms from alcohol, tobacco and other drugs in the ACT. ACTCOSS are calling on the incoming ACT Government to: prioritise harm reduction and increase investment […]

In July 2024, the ACT Government released a consultation paper on minimum standards for rental properties and occupancy law reform. The purpose of this consultation was to seek community views about how the ACT’s tenancy and occupancy laws can be improved and what minimum standards should be introduced to offer better protections. ACTCOSS’s submission supports […]

The 2024 ACT Cost of Living Report shows that the extent and severity of financial stress in Canberra has worsened as the cost-of-living crisis has continued, hitting low-income households hardest. The report reveals that over the past five years, children, young people and families have been disproportionately impacted by above-inflation increases in the cost of […]

Australia is in the midst of a housing crisis, yet current action on housing remains fragmented and inadequate, both within and across different levels of government. Australia has never had a national housing strategy or plan that provides an authoritative framework for housing policy development, action and accountability. Recognising the current lack of direction and […]