On 23 November, Fair Go For Pensioners held its Annual General Meeting (AGM). This year had brought significant challenges, with the ongoing impact of Covid and lockdowns. As a group, older people are more vulnerable than most of the rest of the population.

Despite the difficulty, Progress has been achieved. Participation in our AGM was bigger than and more enthusiastic than many expected.

Fair Go For Pensioners is still around. A strategy and Action Plan has been developed and its first phase largely applied.

Age Pensioners and others depending on Centrelink payments, as well as the growing underemployed and underpaid, are facing the brunt of the rising cost of living. The future looks bleak unless people stand up against it. This is where Fair Go For Pensioners comes in. Our role is to be a centre of gravity, bringing people together to act and are effective.

The AGM gave recognition to the need to build a movement demanding and winning substantial improvements. The first part of the new year will concentrate on building organisational and political capacity, to build an alliance around the spearhead of a campaign to raise the Age Pension above the poverty line and maintain its growth, relative to real adult wages and the cost of living.

An investigation has shown that successive governments have robbed age pensioners by manipulating the current process. Thousands of dollars per capita have been taken every year.

The campaign has already been initiated by a Webinar, also involved Living Incomes For Everyone (LIFE) and the Retired Unionists Network (RUN). We are asking everyone who can to get involved in building the alliance and the formation of action groups.

While the Age Pension is the focus at this point of our strategy, the AGM approved the need to work towards acting on the cost of housing, health services, energy costs, and the growing problem of social isolation.

Agreement was reached on the need to improve communication, develop further our online presence, and expand the leadership team. We want to strengthen ties with affiliates and win over new ones. We want to grow our individual members. The purpose is to help break down the isolation of many activists into their own groups. Much more can be achieved if we act together. The outcome depends on how many feet we can get on the ground.

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The Bushfire Royal Commission was just made its finding public, and they are unequivocal: We desperately need to prepare our communities for more frequent and severe bushfires driven by climate change in the years to come.

It exposed the gaps in how financial assistance is given to people like me, and the hoops we have to jump through to get that support.

And yet, when my local MP asked the Morrison Government why it hasn’t given our community any of the $200 million in bushfire support it promised months ago, they claimed there’s “no need to spend” it.

No need? Everywhere I look there’s need. Two years after a bushfire upended my life, I still live in a caravan on the site of my burned-down home.

In Cobargo, where I was a primary school teacher, people are still living in tents. Others, like me, are living in caravans and sheds. Elsewhere, families and businesses are waiting indefinitely for help that was promised months ago.

Like many of you, I remember vividly the moment Scott Morrison turned his back on a woman in Cobargo as she asked his government for help. Now that the cameras and journalists have moved on from his big promises of support, he’s turning his back on us again.

But GetUp has a plan to turn public attention back to our communities, so Morrison can’t hide from his broken promises and the people they’re hurting.

First, a team of expert researchers and journalists will expose exactly how much assistance has been promised and then denied to survivors. Then, they’ll produce a high-production video series of bushfire survivors sharing our ongoing struggles with people across the country.

Two years ago, I fled my home of 27 years as bushfires tore through Numbugga. I left behind a house filled with memories and pictures from my youth, irreplaceable memories of my life in Africa before I moved to Australia, and hand-written letters from children I taught over the years.

When your home is destroyed in a bushfire, you don’t just lose it once: you lose it every single day, when you wake up and remember all the things you no longer have.

I can’t get any of these things back. But I can make sure that bushfire affected communities like mine get the help Scott Morrison promised them months ago, when the cameras were here. With your help, we’ll bring the cameras back and show the country the human cost of his broken promises.

After Morrison failed our communities in his response to the bushfire crisis, he announced $2 billion in bushfire support and promised that: “If further funds are required, further funds will be provided.”

Now that the media attention has moved on, Morrison seems to have forgotten all about that promise.

But with expert journalists and video producers, we can tell the human stories behind the headlines. It’ll highlight the strength of our communities as we rebuild our lives from the ground up and put names and faces to the thousands who are still waiting for promised support to finally arrive.

Together, we can show Scott Morrison that he needs to fulfill his promise to communities like mine so we can finally rebuild and thrive.

Many of you reading this have shown support for bushfire survivors in the past, and I’m grateful for that. Knowing this movement is behind my community is a source of strength that makes it easier to move forward every day.

And to my fellow survivors who’ve also felt the effects of fires firsthand, my thoughts are with you. We’ll get through this together.

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Australia’s new social movement Living incomes For Everyone, also known by its acronym – LIFE, is launching its response this week to Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s economic statement on the 24 September, and the budget due on 6 October.

These actions are being called under the Slogan “No Excuse For Poverty.” See the link at the bottom of this article.

A call to action

Video from Living Incomes For Everyone

LIFE has not come into existence to primarily lobby political leaders. Others do this. It is rising out of a spreading realisation, that our political leaders are not listening to the concerns of ordinary people, and that a different approach is necessary. The focus is on working to build a movement from below.

This means, strengthening existing networks and building new ones, which will empower their communities and their capacity to come together as a movement, empowering citizens to bring about change.

About 80 union, community, and faith organisations have so far endorsed LIFE’s current demands. More are endorsing. The immediate demands are to keep the JobKeeper and JobSeeker rates at the present level, that no one be left behind, and for a social security system does not harass and treats people with dignity.

The Pen has endorsed these demands.

Since its launch on 21 July, LIFE has drawn an impressive public response from every part of Australia. That much of the media has chosen to ignore thousands of supporter so far, doesn’t change this.

Activists have come mainly from the endorsing organisations, and often participate as representatives, reporting back and returning feedback.

The Covid-19 restrictions have posed major organising challenges. The worst of it is in Melbourne. Lockdown and distancing requirements have compelled a creative approach to organising, and this has left its mark on the actions of the coming days.

Where possible, physical presences will take place. They will target Centrelink, Indue card offices, and relevant ministers. Distancing and number requirements will be observed in all cases. Masks will be worn.

Online activities will take the place of public actions where they are not possible. A virtual rally is being organised by the Tomorrow Movement. Images of would be participants and computer technology, will be used to resemble the real thing.

September’s campaign will be a springboard towards future organising.

This has been a tough year, and there is no doubt that the coming year will be even tougher.

Australia is saddled with a government intent on moving forward to the past, by imposing an even more ruthless version of neoliberalism. Measures to hand over more to the big end of town will be applied, unless there is enough pressure from below to stop it.

Austerity will be at the top of the agenda. The crackdown on the unemployed and pensioners of all kinds will intensify.

So will the push to extend insecure work, to bring down the wages share of income and working conditions, under the slogan of labour market reform. The government has pledged to lower company tax.

Government expenses on services will be cut, on the argument of a need to bring down the budget deficit.

The new neoliberalism will add to the burden of an already failing economy, and what this does, to lower living the standards of families and individuals. On top of this, the impact of Covid-19 is set to continue.

There is plenty of evidence to show that the government’s approach will lead to even more damage to the economy and society.

If the government continues to fail to listen and the suffering rises, the need to build LIFE will become even more necessary.

Those what’s is planned to take place near you go to this link

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