Keep your promises: Community sector warns government on budget mess

The ACT community sector is warning the government not to take a knife to programs or renege on its election commitments as it tries to find savings to pay for a massive $227 million rescue to keep the health system running.

ACT Council of Social Services CEO Devin Bowles said much of the blowout in health cost was predictable and cutting services to a growing number of vulnerable people in the ACT would only make matters worse.

Dr Bowles said a key cause of the health budget problems was ongoing underinvestment in social services.

“When people are not appropriately housed, not receiving enough response after an assault or a crisis, when children aren’t adequately fed, it’s no surprise that the demands on our acute health system delivered by the ACT Government are higher than forecast,” he said.

Dr Bowles said the government was reaping the consequences of this false economy.

He said the ACT Government had been shrinking its investment in the community sector compared to the rest of its budget and that, in real terms, investment had not kept up with population growth.

Last July Dr Bowles launched a combined campaign ahead of the election for greater funding for the community sector, which was struggling to maintain services.

This elicited a number of commitments from Labor to designed to ensure the community sector is financially sustainable and able to operate effectively.

Dr Bowles said that while the government had not signalled that there would be any reduction in funding for the community sector, ACTCOSS would not tolerate any backsliding.

“It did make a number of commitments to look at increasing that investment as part of the election campaign. We expect that those commitments to hold,” he said.

Dr Bowles said increases in health spending were a recurring theme of ACT budgets, but the way to contain them was to invest in upstream services, the type offered by the community sector that helped support people’s health.

“It would be simple for the government to say, ‘Oh, we’ve got a deficit; therefore, we need to cut costs,'” he said.

“It’s easy to cut costs from the community sector but that would be an extraordinarily poor investment.”

Dr Bowles urged the government to look at the budget through an investment lens instead of a cost-cutting one.

He also urged community sector groups and organisations not to give up hope or go quiet in the lead-up to the budget as they heard directorates and agencies did not have any money.

“I think it is important for the community sector to continue to highlight the value of the work that it does, not just in terms of the human consequences of allowing people to reach their full potential and relieving human suffering, but importantly to keep the health budget from continuing to spiral by making evidence-informed investments in upstream services provided by the community sector,” he said.

Dr Bowles said ACTCOSS would be making a budget submission prioritising housing and homelessness, cost of living relief, support for the community sector to continue to provide essential services and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander self-determination.

He said the demand for essential services provided by the community sector was increasing due to cost-of-living pressures, and whole new cohorts of people, including those with jobs, were requiring things like food relief.

“The community sector has been stretching itself as far as possible to meet these needs,” he said.

“I meet with CEOs who routinely have to make the heartbreaking decision about what services they’re not going to offer any more or to certain people because they simply can’t.

“So it’s about triaging and trying to make sure that with the resources available, their organisation is doing as much good as possible, but it can be quite heartbreaking to be in the situation of trying to look out for the community and not being resourced to do so when there’s such clear need.”

YCWA Canberra has made a budget submission and has a similar message.

It says that some community services are operating under the same funding envelope as they did 10 years ago, despite population changes and significant policy reforms.

“We are concerned that in light of overriding budget deficits, as well as repeated messaging from ACT Government representatives about resource limitations, that programs in dire need of investment or subsidies will be left facing the same precarity following the 2025-2026 Budget,” the submission says.

“The temptation for government to address Budget shortfalls by treating community services as a ‘magic pudding’ that can be subjected to underinvestment while meeting increasing demand is common.”

The submission urges the government to retain and expand peppercorn lease arrangements for community service facilities and properly resource domestic and family violence and sexual violence programs for victim-survivors.

It also wants last year’s one-off funding for emergency material, financial aid and food relief services to continue, as well as the long-term investment in homelessness services.

For children, YWCA Canberra wants to continue the emergency placement program for after-school care and adequately fund the three-year-old preschool initiative so that NGOs don’t have to fill the gap.