Campaigns

The Make Renting Fair campaign is working to ensure that more than 700,000 Western Australian renters have secure, affordable and healthy homes. We are asking for reforms to improve safety, security and fairness within the statutory framework for renting in WA including:

• Ending “no grounds” evictions
• Introducing a rent stabilisation mechanism
• Increasing the length of notice periods for rent increases
• Creating minimum standards

WACOSS is a founding member of the Make Renting Fair Alliance, alongside Anglicare WA, Circle Green Community Legal and Shelter WA. Our alliance is a coalition of WA’s peak housing bodies and stakeholders, and people who rent their homes.

We have a vision for a Western Australia where helping its people and communities is above politics, where people get the help they truly need, where everyone has access to a safe, secure and healthy home, where children are given the best start to life, where people can access services when and where they need them, and where no one is left behind.

Children growing up in poverty go to bed or school hungry, feel left out of local sport or can’t go on school camps. Children in poverty live in overcrowded homes and worry about their parents. A lack of money limits a child’s life and learning. Children in unstable housing frequently move due to high rents, which disrupts school, community and friendships. All of this affects how they see themselves and the impacts can be lifelong.

High rates of child poverty are not inevitable. Australia and New Zealand have significantly reduced child poverty when governments have committed to act. A commitment to end child poverty, enshrined in legislation and with cross-party support, reduces the risk that commitments can easily be swept away. The Economic Inclusion Advisory Council has recommended that the Australian Government adopt an official measure of poverty (monetary and multi-dimensional) and that it be independently reported on and enshrined in legislation.

More than 165 organisations across Australia, including WACOSS, have joined the End Child Poverty campaign, calling on all Federal Parliamentarians to pass legislation by 2030. The legislation would acknowledge the inherent right of all our children to live a life free from deprivation and hardship.

Social Reinvestment WA aims to end the systemic over representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in WA’s justice system.

Their vision is for a transformation of WA’s justice systems to build safer communities through prioritising the cultural, social and economic wellbeing of families, using smart justice approaches such as justice reinvestment.

Social Reinvestment WA was formed in 2014, after children at Banksia Hill Juvenile Detention Centre were sent to and held in the Hakea adult prison following a “riot”. While there were many individuals and families advocating for these young people, there was no established, unified sector voice to speak up for these young people and liaise with government to ensure humane treatment.

WACOSS is proud to be one of the first organisations to become involved with Social Reinvestment WA, as well as Reconciliation WA, Wungening Aboriginal Corporation, Aboriginal Legal Service WA, Oxfam, Outcare, Amnesty International, Bringing Them Home WA (Yokai) and First Nations Deaths in Custody Watch Committee.

No Place for Poverty is a social movement which aims to unite people in challenging growing levels of inequality, inspire local action, demand fairer systems and advocate for better government policies.

We amplify the voices of people with lived experience of poverty and connect with the broader community via a civic participation plan, which aims to mobilise and equip people with the tools to advocate for a WA without poverty. This includes a social media campaign as well as community workshops.

WACOSS is a founding partner organisation, alongside Anglicare WA, Mission Australia (WA branch), Centrecare, Communicare, Wungening Aboriginal Corporation and Ruah Community Services.

The Uluru Statement from the Heart was issued to the Australian people in May 2017, developed after two years of regional dialogues around the country. This was the most proportionally significant consultation process of First Nations peoples Australia has ever seen.

The Uluru Statement from the Heart calls for:

• A First Nations Voice to Parliament enshrined in the Constitution
• A Makarrata commission to supervise a process of agreement-making and truth-telling

Australia is at a crossroads

The right and rational path is a stronger system of social housing that provides security and stability to individuals, while at the same time bolstering our common national prosperity. The alternative is an increasingly brutal financial contest for something that should be a basic right of citizenship – decent shelter.

If we don’t act now, nothing will change. We need your help and support to continue to build momentum and public support for the government to fund social housing.

Join the campaign today!

Anti-Poverty Week supports the Australian community to have an increased understanding of poverty and to take action collectively to end it.

The campaign is active every year in the week around October 17, the United Nations Day for the Eradication of Poverty. 

In 2026, Anti-Poverty Week will be held from October 11 to 17.

We all have human rights. Protecting human rights is a way of ensuring everyone is treated fairly, equally and with dignity and respect. In Western Australia, we don’t have formal protection for our human rights. Now is the time to come together to create a Human Rights Act for all of us.

A Human Rights Act aims for everyone to be treated fairly when they are dealing with the government and public authorities. A Human Rights Act would provide us with many protections, including ensuring that we can all access the health services we need, regardless of our bank balance, and that every kid can get a good education, no matter their postcode. It will also provide us all with a powerful tool to challenge injustice and will mean that if someone has their rights violated by a public authority they can take action and seek justice.

Everyone knows that children do best when they are supported, nurtured and loved.

But across Australia, children as young as 10 can be arrested by police, charged with an offence, hauled before a court and locked away in a prison.

It’s time for the federal, state and territory governments to do what’s right and change the laws to raise the age, so children 10-13 years are not sent to prison.

Children belong in classrooms and playgrounds, not in handcuffs, courtrooms or prison cells.

The campaign to Raise the Rate for Good is key to reducing poverty and inequality in Australia. The goal of the Raise the Rate for Good campaign is to fix our social security safety net for good so that it keeps people out of poverty.

We are calling for a permanent and adequate increase to JobSeeker, Youth Allowance, Austudy, Abstudy, Special Benefit and Parenting Payment. The base rate of JobSeeker and these other payments should be boosted to at least $82 a day (the pension rate) so everyone can cover the cost of the basics.

Raise the Rate for Good is an initiative of the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS), the peak body for the community services sector in Australia.