Address by Leanne Wood
Anglicare Manager for Research, Evaluation and Advocacy
Thank you for the invitation to join you today, on Anglicare Sunday.
I’ve worked for Anglicare for over a decade, and without a doubt, these have been the most challenging – and satisfying – and – years of my career.
They’ve been challenging because day in and day out I’m confronted with the evidence and, via our service delivery staff, the lived reality of much of what is wrong with the world: homelessness, domestic and family violence, poverty. Many of the people Anglicare works with have few channels to be heard, and almost no power to change a system that they didn’t create.
On the other hand, they’ve also been satisfying years because I’m part of an organisation that not only allows me to contribute in a small way to making positive change in the world, but actively encourages me to do that. The Anglican Church Southern Queensland, through Synod, and through the Anglicare executive and board, particularly direct us to two of the five Marks of Mission, in order to shape our work:
- To respond to human need by loving service
- To transform unjust structures of society
These are not platitudes – they directly shape every service we offer, every interaction our staff have with individuals and families who need a hand up, and every research project or advocacy campaign we support.
Now this is risky and complex stuff. Social injustice isn’t just about material deprivation: it also involves social and cultural processes that create harm. The Brotherhood of St Laurence has referred to this as ‘the lived experience of being treated as less-than’.
Humans are incredible in their diversity. Individuals experience and deal with deprivation and harm in different ways, and every journey is unique.
So we can talk about the problems of society at a macro and system level – ‘homelessness in Queensland’ for example. The stats could keep you awake at night:
- More than 300,000 Queenslanders – that’s equivalent to a town bigger than Cairns — are either homeless or in rental stress. The Anglicare Rental Affordability Snapshot this year showed that almost every lower income household in every region in southern Queensland pays more than a third of their income on the median rent. In the Brisbane metro area, of the nearly 3500 properties advertised in March, there were 4 affordable and appropriate for people on income support.
So what we say in almost every submission to government we prepare is that lifting people out of crisis is a policy choice. Governments have done it before, during Covid for example when the Covid supplement temporarily lifted 425,000 people out of poverty, and could do it again.
But even when we advocate at that high level for change in the system, we need to always be grounded in what this means for the people who live that reality every day.
Homelessness is not just about numbers or data – it’s about people, their dignity, and their need for a safe and supportive place to call home. There is a human story behind every number.
Over the past year, our research and advocacy team has been working with staff and young people in our youth homelessness and youth justice services, and with the Life Course Centre at the University of Queensland, on a project called Hanging by a Thread: Our Search for Home. The project is a ‘photovoice’ project, in which the young people took photos of what ‘home’ means to them.
If I asked you that question, what would you say? A place of belonging, of security and safety? Somewhere you can be yourself?
For some of our young people, it was a much more confronting question. One young person thought she wouldn’t be able to participate in the project because her only experience of home was so negative. How would she portray that? How could she imagine and somehow show what a positive experience of home would look like when she’d never experienced it?
For other young people, the project meant overcoming a real sense of shame. Society teaches these young people that homelessness is something to be ashamed of, something to be hidden; and we were inviting them to take photos of their homelessness and show it to the world. There’s enormous vulnerability in that; and great courage in overcoming it.
It’s not a surprise then that the images that the young people were willing to share challenge our understandings of home in thought-provoking ways. Harmony took a photo of dirty dishes left on a kitchen table, and called it The mess can wait. “In your own home,” she says, “you don’t have to worry about the mess. … You don’t have to leave or be moved on. You will be back here again later, and the mess can wait until then for you to clean it up.”
For another young person, who wanted to remain anonymous, home meant a photo of a backpack with a breakfast-on-the-go popper, a torn shopping list and the small luxury of a packet of Tim Tams in it. The shopping list had on it things like:
- Sleeping bag
- Shelter
- Love
- Care
- Hope
- Mum off drugs
- Dad to be happy
- Reunite with sister
- To feel okay.
I think the voices of these young people hold a challenge for all of us. Why is this acceptable in one of the richest countries in the world? What can we do about this and all the other inequities we see around us?
And it’s why Anglicare has such a long history of caring and advocacy.
Most of you know that Anglicare recently celebrated 150 years of service to the community, so that work isn’t new. As part of the church, we have been doing it for a long time, in some brave and innovative and creative ways.
As part of your church, as far back as 1870, Mrs Ann Drew played a major role in establishing what was called the Female Refuge and Infants Home for young single mothers and their babies, a precursor of St. Mary’s at Toowong; and then went on to establish Lady Musgrave Lodge in the 1890s as a hostel and training place for immigrants and other ‘friendless’ girls. She was also an active advocate against the Contagious Diseases Act of 1868, which effectively saw women identified under the Act incarcerated without trial either in hospital or in prison.
As part of your church, Anglicare established in 2004 the first holistic, integrated program in Australia for people living with HIV/AIDS.
Today, as part of your church, Anglicare continues to work in some pretty brave and innovative ways.
NO ONE wants to hear about strategic plans 😊 but I do just want to highlight that one of Anglicare’s priorities this year and next is to ‘aim to alleviate the housing crisis’.
That’s a bold objective in this current environment, and speaks to Anglicare’s, and the church’s, willingness to work in difficult spaces, to take chances when it’s the right thing to do, and to live out our vision, as an organisation, to create a more loving, just and inclusive society, reflecting the life and teachings of Christ.
So what can you do to contribute to this work?
First of all, I want to thank you for the contribution you already make to that work through your prayers, and your donations to projects like our new Youth Homelessness service at Beenleigh, which will provide crisis accommodation for up to 42 young people in need. Thank you for your on-the-ground time and energy volunteering and partnering with us through collaborations like Thread Together.
We need all of those things to keep growing and deepening, so between us, we can keep making a difference.
The work of Anglicare is the work of the church. Let’s continue to build ways to support each other, to work together, and to advocate together – with, and for, those in our community who need a hand up.