Our communities suffer when too many Tasmanians live in poverty, write TasCOSS CEO, Paula Wriedt and CatholicCare Tasmania CEO, Julia Mangan.
WE know with the ever-increasing costs of living that many Tasmanians are having to make difficult decisions every day.
Choices between filling the car up with fuel or filling the fridge with food; paying a large power bill or going to the dentist to fix a cracked tooth; covering the rent or replacing school shoes that have been outgrown for the term ahead.
For a growing number of Tasmanians, these decisions are part of everyday life.
Around one-in-six Tasmanians are living in poverty, with Tasmania laying claim to some of the highest rates of poverty and among the lowest incomes in the country.
Our communities suffer when too many Tasmanians are struggling to afford the basics of everyday life, trapped in cycles of disadvantage with no clear path out.
This week marks Anti-Poverty Week and its message is a straightforward but important one — acting together to end poverty.
Poverty is about more than income. It affects dignity, opportunity, connection and wellbeing.
And increasingly, poverty and financial hardship do not fit the stereotypes we might once have associated with them.
Through CatholicCare Tasmania’s work supporting individuals and families across the state, we see the realities of financial pressure up close.
People can be working, raising families and doing everything they reasonably can, yet still struggle to keep up.
A rent increase, unexpected car repair, illness or reduction in working hours can be enough to tip a household that was just managing into crisis.
For many Tasmanians, there simply isn’t a financial buffer left.
Housing is at the centre of this challenge.
A safe, secure and affordable home is not a luxury. It is the bedrock on which so much else in our lives is built.
Stable housing supports our health, gives children security and helps people maintain employment, participate in education and remain connected with their community.
When housing becomes unaffordable, everything else becomes harder. And when household budgets can stretch no further, people need somewhere to turn.
Tasmania has an extraordinary network of community organisations providing emergency relief, housing support, financial counselling, family services, mental health support and much more.
But that safety net is under increasing pressure.
TasCOSS’s recent statewide Community Services Industry Sustainability Pulse Check found 81 per cent of organisations had experienced increased demand without additional resources.
Three-in-five (60 per cent) had been forced to turn people away because they did not have the resources to help everyone seeking support, while 48 per cent had reduced service delivery because of financial pressures.
Perhaps most concerningly, only one-in-five (21 per cent) considered themselves financially sustainable.
Those figures should matter to all of us. When the organisations we rely on to provide essential support cannot meet demand, the problems do not disappear. They become deeper, more complex and ultimately more costly.
People do not choose poverty but as a community we can choose how we respond.
That starts with making sure people have enough to live on while they get back on their feet. A single person without children receiving the maximum rate of JobSeeker is expected to get by on less than $60 a day — a near-impossible feat in the current economy.
Getting serious about reducing poverty means governments investing in more social and affordable housing, intervening earlier before financial hardship becomes a crisis, and sustainably funding the community organisations people turn to when they need support.
And it means making poverty reduction an explicit priority and holding ourselves accountable for achieving it.
This Anti-Poverty Week, we are joining calls for the Australian Government to establish standard measures of poverty, set targets to reduce it and publicly report on progress.
Because what we choose to measure says something about what we value.
We measure economic growth, unemployment, inflation and government finances. And rightly so, because they matter.
But measuring poverty and setting targets to reduce it matters just as much, if not more.
We began by talking about choices. We’ll leave you with one more to ponder.
We can choose to accept a Tasmania where too many people are forced to choose between the essentials of everyday life. Or we can choose to do something about it.
Anti-Poverty Week runs from 11-17 October 2026. Community awareness events will be held at Elizabeth Street Mall, Hobart and Brisbane Street Mall, Launceston from 11am-2pm on Wednesday 14 October. To learn more, take part in activities and add your voice to calls for action to reduce poverty, visit antipovertyweek.org.au.
Paula Wriedt is chief executive of the Tasmanian Council of Social Service (TasCOSS) and Julia Mangan is chief executive of CatholicCare Tasmania.