Advocacy Publications

In this submission to Council of Attorneys-General review of the age of criminal responsibility, ACTCOSS recommends the minimum age be raised from 10 to 14 across all states and territories. A minimum age of 14 aligns with international human rights standards and will ensure children under 14 are no longer criminalised. ACTCOSS recommends that children diverted from the youth justice system are responded to […]

Our submission to the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety on the Human Rights (Workers’ Rights) Amendment Bill 2019 ACTCOSS argued that all Economic, Social and Cultural (ESC) Rights should be included in the ACT Human Rights Act. This would establish a positive obligation on any ACT Government to guarantee ESC rights in policy […]

Submission by ACT Energised Consumers Project Partners: ACT Council of Social Service (ACTCOSS), Care Financial Counselling Service, and Better Renting. ACTCOSS, Care Financial Counselling Service, and Better Renting made a joint submission to the Independent Competition and Regulatory Commission (ICRC) in response to their Retail Electricity Price Investigation 2020-24 Draft Report. Our submission welcomed the […]

This report presents the outcomes from a workshop that aimed at assisting Evoenergy in engaging with, and supporting the engagement of, vulnerable energy consumers as part of the development of their next 5-year plan for the gas network in the ACT and Queanbeyan-Palerang region.  Evoenergy is the region’s gas distribution network provider and is required to submit its gas access arrangement proposal for the 2021-26 period to the Australian Energy […]

Our submission in response to the ACT Sustainable Energy Policy 2020-25 Discussion Paper calls on the ACT Government to assess all measures in its next 5-year plan for sustainable energy against criteria for a just transition to zero net greenhouse gas emissions in the ACT by 2045. The submission includes 20 recommendations aimed at building community trust and ensuring a socially […]

This submission responds to the ACT Community Services Directorate’s ‘Strengthening partnerships: commissioning for social impact – discussion paper’. ACTCOSS strongly supports the development of a Commissioning for Social Impact Strategy as a whole-of-government framework that should assist in matching the intent of The Social Compact and other partnership arrangements between the ACT Government and community […]

In ACTCOSS’s submission for the 2020-21 ACT Budget, we outline fifty priorities. Our submission calls for adequate resourcing of community-based, non-government delivered services and responses to meet community need and a changing Canberra. It also seeks fulfillment of ACT Government promises plus community priorities set out in successive Budget submissions since the 2016 election. These […]

In 1999, ACTCOSS and the ACT Government started the Poverty Task Group, beginning a concerted effort to quantify poverty in Canberra and highlight its lived experience. Shattered Myths is a retrospective of twenty years of work on poverty, tracing ACTCOSS’s continued efforts to shatter myths about prosperity being available to everyone in Canberra. The publication […]

In October 2014, ACTCOSS and the Women’s Centre for Health Matters collaborated to release a report for Anti-Poverty Week titled Creating Opportunity or Entrenching Disadvantage? which explored ACT labour market data and trends, and the female share for the largest employing industries in the ACT. Now 5 years later, approximately 37,000 people live in low-income […]

This report is from a project conducted by ACTCOSS with support from the ACT Office For Disability as part of the ACT’s commitment to implementing the National Disability Strategy.  The report shows that people with disability self-report poor health outcomes arising from personal and structural issues: Economic disadvantage Diagnostic overshadowing (where a person’s disability is […]