ACOSS and UNSW to tackle poverty and inequality through new collaboration
The Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) and UNSW Sydney will work to tackle poverty and equality ‘head on’ through a new collaboration being launched Thursday 8 February 2018. The collaboration includes backing of various ACOSS member organisations, UNSW, and philanthropists to the value of $2 million over 5 years. Although well-being is high, the latest OECD Economic Survey of Australia 2017 reports unequivocally that inequality has risen in Australia. The struggle to afford basic daily needs is a serious problem for many people in Australia despite being a wealthy country. Nearly 3 million people live below the internationally accepted poverty line, of which 731,000 are children. Read more at: https://www.acoss.org.au/media_release/unsw-and-acoss-to-tackle-poverty-and-inequality-through-new-collaboration/
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Dr Cassandra Goldie, head of the Australian Council of Social Service, has a PhD in Law from UNSW. At the university she met Professor Peter Saunders, from the Social Policy Research Centre, with whom ACOSS has now partnered to produce landmark reports into poverty. Close to three million Australians were living below the poverty line in 2014. “As a country that prides itself on an egalitarian culture, we should be determined to change this picture,” says Cassandra Goldie. Shortly after joining the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS), Goldie, a UNSW alumna, approached Peter Saunders from UNSW's Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC) with the idea of starting a partnership to bring the neglected underbelly of Australian society into the public gaze. Its lack of visibility was partly due to the fact that Australia does not produce an official report on the subject. Read more in the UNSW Newsroom