Financial Hardship and Emergency Relief in Victoria

Abstract

The existence and provision of emergency relief remains one of the more contentious aspects of poverty relief in Australia. This is largely due to a fundamental difference of opinion within government and the welfare sector about how to best tackle the financial hardship being experienced by people in need. Some contend that emergency relief should be expanded and better funded by the Commonwealth, whereas others believe it should be discontinued altogether and replaced by more generous social welfare payments. This debate continues unresolved for a number of reasons, including a lack of reliable and comprehensive data on who uses emergency relief in Australia and why. This paper reports on a State-wide investigation undertaken of emergency relief use in Victoria between 2007 and 2008. It has found that existing social welfare recipients—especially those on the disability support pension, parenting payment, and Newstart allowance—are the main users of emergency relief, who are living in households headed by a single adult, and forced to rent housing in the private sector. A disaggregation of the findings over both time and spatial regions of Victoria suggests that the level of need is not uniform. Several recommendations are offered to address the financial hardship that some people living in differing parts of Victoria face on an ongoing basis.

Abstract

Keywords:

• Emergency Relief
• Financial Hardship
• Social Welfare Payments
• Victoria

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the two anonymous referees of this paper and the Editor of the Journal, Professor Christine Bigby, La Trobe University, as well as Professor Mike Berry, RMIT University, for their helpful comments on previous versions of this paper. We would also like to acknowledge funding and staffing support from the Victorian Council of Social Services plus the School of Global Studies, Social Science and Planning, RMIT University, and the various Victorian-based emergency relief agencies who participated in this study. Of course, any criticisms of this paper and the arguments made within it remain the responsibility of the authors.