Income Support and Housing

This chapter discusses problems and issues involved in providing rural people with basic safety net provisions concerning income support and housing, and suggest potentially useful policy and program guidelines. Australia’s income security system provides an impressive array of pensions, allowances and other benefits for people who are unable to earn a basic income either permanently or because of temporary circumstances such as illness or unemployment. From a rural perspective, Australia’s income security system reflects urbo-centric, reactive, residualist and, in relation to primary industries, developmental policy frameworks. Because Australia’s income security net was designed primarily for wage earners, it has a number of gaps and inconsistencies in relation to farmers and other rural self-employed people. Rural social care housing issues are different to urban because low-income residents are usually confined to a single locality and cannot easily move to more affordable or suitable accommodation in other places.