VIC:Help struggling families be merry

AAP General News (Australia)
12-02-2011
VIC:Help struggling families be merry

MELBOURNE, Dec 2 AAP - Federal MPs might be celebrating a pay rise this Christmas,
but for many families the season brings little reason to be merry.

Launching its annual Christmas toy and food appeal, Anglicare Victoria chief executive
Paul McDonald said there had been a 52 per cent surge in demand for financial counselling
in the state in the past 12 months.

Requests for emergency relief food parcels have also risen by up to 20 per cent in
some areas of Melbourne, with those in need coming from a broader range of circumstances
than before.

Mr McDonald said utility and food prices were galloping ahead of incomes and more people
were becoming tangled in debt.

He said Anglicare Victoria was now seeing some 50,000 families a year struggling to get by.

"It's not levelling off and we are quite concerned now that with such numbers, how
many thousands of Australian homes are not just teetering on the edge of financial oblivion,
but actually are in it at the moment and are unable to see themselves through the next
month," he told AAP.

Mr McDonald said Christmas was a time that highlighted what people did have, but it
also highlighted loss.

"For our families, this sense of loss, this sense of shortfall, is magnified over Christmas,"

he said.

Mr McDonald said Anglicare launched the toy and food appeal with the hope and belief
that Australians were very generous and understood how lucky they were.

He said Australians opened their hearts and wallets in times of crisis, and he hoped
they would do so again this Christmas.

But he said the federal government could also make reforms to income benefits that
would lift people out of financial difficulty.

"What's in the government's control is things like Centrelink benefits and Newstart
allowance which sit, I can tell you, $200 underneath the poverty line," he said.

"And so what gets magnified each Christmas is ... people on Centrelink benefits and
Newstart allowance are being left behind and are now not occasionally, but regularly,
reliant on welfare agencies to get them through the fortnight.

"I think we need to ... in the affluent country that we are, to look after those most at need."

Anglicare Victoria is hoping to secure donations to deliver 5000 toys and more than
2000 food hampers to families in need.

AAP ce/mn/it

KEYWORD: ANGLICARE

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