In this submission to the Senate inquiry into student income support, ACOSS provides a series of recommendations for helping young people to take up education and training and, build both personal opportunities and the broader level of skills and knowledge within our community.

ACOSS proposes reforms to family assistance payments estimated to cost $2.5 billion. Over one million families would benefit from the plan which. is designed to ease financial hardship, help families with young children juggle jobs and care, and reduce poverty traps.

In this rep;port, ACOSS proposes the following changes to assistance with the costs of care for babies and toddlers: a universal maternity benefit; an extension of the existing parenting payment to support middle income parents caring at home for a child under 3 years old, either on a full or part time basis; reduced child...

The headline unemployment figures published each month are used by policy makers, the Reserve Bank, and others to follow trends in Australia's unemployment levels. As is often suspected, these figures only tell part of the unemployment story. This paper shows that if we were to include hidden unemployment in the statistics, we would have an...

This submission to the Productivity Commission investigates the affordability and availability of housing for first home buyers and others. It recommends increasing the supply of affordable housing options for people on low incomes through structural changes to home ownership; redressing the mismatch between housing supply and demand; improving the effectiveness of housing assistance programs; and...