You Have A Friend
www.youhaveafriend.com.au
www.youhaveafriend.org.au
Media Reports
March 2013 SO, the Melbourne City Council has a plan to clean up its CBD of beggars.
While aesthetically, it would be good for the city, it is really only masking the problem of not only beggars, but also the genuine homeless.
The CBD of Melbourne may be targeted by professional beggars, but there are also so many others who have fallen on tough times and have to resort to living on the streets and swallowing their pride to ask for hand-outs and support.
These are the faceless people of not only metropolitan Melbourne, but also many regional and rural areas of the nation.
These are the people many of us walk by and choose to ignore.
But these are also the people who desperately need a hand up, rather than a hand-out. Click Here
February 2013 In Oct 2012 the Senate endorsed the Federal government's contentious cut to the single parent payment bill. Single partents and their children will now receive as much as $60 - $100 a week less. This bill was not oppossed by the Liberal party and highlights the fact no major party is addressing the alarming rate of poverty in Australia. 1 in 8 persons are now living in poverty and over 600,000 chinden. Read the letter written to Tony Abbott on 28/01/2013. If a reply is received, it will be attached Click here
October 15 2012
A report by welfare organisation the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) has found one in eight Australians is living in poverty
ACOSS says that equates to more than 2.2 million people living below the poverty line in Australia and close to 600,000 of them are children..... "This makes the Federal Government's recent cuts to payments for sole parents all the more disturbing.
"Under the changes passed in the Senate last week, over 100,000 sole parents on the parenting payment will be between $60 and $100 a week poorer from January 2013."
August 1 2012
Are Free Range Eggs really from Free Range Chooks?...Under the proposed standard for the egg industry, a producer could label their eggs free range if they kept as many as 20,000 birds per hectare. The current model code allows 1500......
Free Range eggs and chicken meat are being pushed by the large outlets. Naturally the prices for such eggs have increased almost three times in some cases. A recent survey of "free range eggs" in some of the large stores, displays NO information as to who is the governing body and what constitutes the number of birds per hectare, or even if the birds are roaming free !!!!. A recent report stated...
"The country's biggest chicken meat producers, including Inghams and Baida who supply supermarkets and fast-food outlets such as KFC, have applied to the consumer watchdog to have a new free-range label certified for chicken meat...."? Under the proposed standard for the egg industry, a producer could label their eggs free range if they kept as many as 20,000 birds per hectare. The current model code allows 1500.
FREPA (Free Range Egg and Poultry Australia click here ) are the only current independant accredited body governing what is or is not "free range". To increase their limit of 1500 chickens per hectare to 20,000 birds per hectare, would hardly seem "free range" and yet allow the large corporations to sell product (eggs and meat) at highly inflated prices.
3 August 2010
Older women at higher risk of homelessness
Divorce, separation, rising rents and the global financial crisis are putting older women at a higher risk of homelessness, according to a new study from Homelessness NSW. The study found that single women over 45 are facing poverty instead of enjoying financial security, and that many of them are ending up on the streets or in crisis accommodation.
Here is the audio link from ABC Radio National Breakfast's story aired on 3 August 2010 - reporter Ali Benton and Fran Kellie reporting on older women and homelessness
(Please note this is an MP3 file 2.7 mb and may take a short while to load to your computer -
However it is a worthwhile, informative report)
