Caring for community

Healthcare, education and housing are a basic necessities. Everyone has the right to a safe home, accessible medical treatment and affordable education. 

The response to the COVID-19 crisis has shown us that governments have always been able to enact policies to ensure that no one lives in poverty and to fully fund the services we need to live a good life, they’ve just chosen not to.

The Greens will invest in a healthcare system that is accessible for everyone through equipment upgrades, improved communications and staff training. This plan will also increase mental health funding in prevention, early intervention and community support. 

Successive governments have failed to provide safe, secure and affordable housing for everyone. A major investment in new and existing social housing will guarantee secure, affordable, energy-efficient and accessible housing for all Western Australians.

The Greens will:

Disabled people continue to be locked out of the community and denied the same rights as other Australians.

Inaccessible public buildings and infrastructure, a chronic shortage of accessible housing, high rates of poverty and a lack of funding for communications and healthcare services are perpetuating this discrimination. We must do better.

We will ensure that the rights of disabled Western Australians are upheld so that they can enjoy full and active lives, through greater investment and regulatory changes to our infrastructure, education, employment, and service delivery.

This includes making the healthcare system more accessible, improving accessibility to public transport and public spaces, building accessible homes, and championing inclusive education and employment.

Everyone has the right to accessible and affordable education regardless of their bank balance or postcode. But for too long, inequities in funding have undermined our state public education and TAFE systems; children with special education needs are missing out on vital support; and education planning decisions are hampered by political influence.

The Greens will make public schools genuinely free by abolishing fees, and will make all TAFE courses free. We will establish an Independent Schools Commission to remove politics from school planning decisions, and ensure state funding to schools is based on student needs by allocating additional funding to address disadvantage and increasing support for vulnerable students.

Like healthcare and education, housing is a basic necessity. Nobody should be without a home. It doesn’t matter whether you’re renting or buying, everybody deserves a decent and stable place to live.

Before COVID-19 struck, thousands of Western Australians were homeless while hundreds of thousands of families were struggling with enormous rents that they could barely afford. Now, with the mess made by state and federal governments in responding to the rent crisis, many more Australians are facing homelessness and housing insecurity. While emergency housing is needed, we also need a plan for ending rent poverty on the other side.

The Greens will address the failures of successive governments to provide safe, secure and affordable housing for everyone, with a major investment in new and existing social housing. We will guarantee secure, affordable and energy-efficient housing for all Western Australians.

We will also overhaul laws to ensure renters rights, end homelessness by investing in the Housing First model, and create thousands of jobs in the process.

For too long, under-investment in prevention, early intervention and community mental health services has meant people have not had access to the support they need. This has resulted in far too many people ending up at crisis point and being admitted to the costly hospital system.

The Greens will ensure a system that provides quality services and supports for everyone who needs them, when they need them. People in our community should be able to expect the same level of care for their mental health as they do for their physical health.