Elderly, single parents families, people living with disabilities or chronic illness are sleeping cold in tents and caravans or in temporary accommodation. Help us help them.

We've been living on the flood plain for generations, almost 200 years... we are the tea tree capital, the food bowl and the red cedar wood suppliers from the 1800s. Our wood built your homes and buildings it floated down the Richmond River. Now we need your help to survive living on the flood plain.

At present, Australia is experiencing a rapidly increasing level of homelessness, which has resulted from a combination of inflation/rising living costs and an extreme shortage of housing (in both the rental and home buyers markets) with some states experiencing a housing availability of only 1%. This phenomenon has created sudden and extreme pressure on both the social housing sector (where some areas have a 15+ year waiting list) and homeless organisations, who have been powerless to be able to locate temporary accommodation solutions. The result is visible all over Australia. Most of us have noticed the Campervans, Caravans, 4wd's and Sedans lining our streets and parks, which have been hastily converted, often to house entire families. Many of us have noticed tent cities popping up behind buildings or in carparks, in a desperate attempt for families and individuals to find places to sleep for the night. At the same time, numerous public facilities lay abandoned and empty. Across the last several years, many states have seen the closure of a number of government owned buildings (such as hospitals and schools) and these are not being utilised for anything. Often these buildings already have bathrooms and showers and they contain large quantities of rooms, where simple mattresses/inflatable mattresses and bedding could be placed for people to sleep. The reality is that at this point in time, Australia is set to experience at least another several interest rate rises, which will push the cost of living through the roof. The increase in our homeless population will literally be in the millions at that stage. We have a crisis level problem, which requires a crisis level solution. Recently the Government pledged $50 billion to build more community housing. The first part of the problem with this proposal was that it was blocked by the Greens and the second of the issues is that it's simply not a fast enough solution to combat the problem. We need action now and what better way of solving the issue than utilising our available resources?. Unfortunately with the current direction of our economy, the majority of Australians will either be experiencing housing instability in the coming months, or they'll know someone who is. So, please get behind this petition. Sign it, spread it, make it go viral until we have enough signatures that state governments can't turn their backs on it. Thank you.

Access to community events, workshops and consultations via online mechanisms, is often the only way for many people to participate. Live-streaming and interactive online gatherings removes one of the common barriers to participation for people with physical or intellectual disabilities (including sensory sensitivities) and single parents, people facing financial hardship and those still 'coviding'. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, organisations, companies and the government, managed to move almost all activity to online platforms. Sadly, since mandates were lifted in October 2022, we have seen most online participation options disappear from our communities; leaving some of our most vulnerable people more isolated and alone than ever. Since the beginning on 2023, we have also seen more companies begin to demand staff return to the office if they wish to keep their jobs; but for many of the aforementioned people, entering or re-entering the workforce was only possible because of the increased availability of work from home jobs. To ensure these people are not left behind and are included in our society, we need to legislate mandatory online options for participation. This would be restricted to local and state government initiatives or events funded either in part or in full, by any level of government. Furthermore, the Victorian Government needs to encourage and incentivise online access to events, workshops, seminars or consultations provided by private businesses and organisations, so that we can ensure everyone in the state of Victoria, can live a fully participatory life in their community. The Victorian government must also legislate work from home concessions by any business or company who can reasonably pivot to these arrangements, for people with disabilities, single parents and those who cannot afford the cost of physically going into the office, as well as those still 'coviding'. We must be a truly equitable and accessible state for ALL people living in Victoria.

As of 2023, trans and gender-diverse Australians cannot identify on any intake form at any RTO because of the current data set by NCVER / DEWR. The Workplace Gender and Equality ACT excludes the participation of gender-diverse people, It only collects information on cis-gendered men and women. This affects every medium to large business in Australia. Nearly Every data set in Australia excludes gender-diverse people including studies on Alcohol and Drugs, Suicide, and first-year indicators in schools. Orchidectomies are given to cis-gender men in the public health system but denied to trans women who need to get off testosterone blockers and affirming their gender. Mastectomies are given to cis-gendered women in the public health system but denied to trans men who need this so they can stop binding, avoid scoliosis and affirm their gender. Breast Surgery is given in some public hospitals to cis-gendered women after mastectomies because it is important to their mental health, gender and well-being but denied to trans women who also need this for mental health, gender and well-being. To my knowledge, no politician or report has stood up to say we could be doing these gender-affirming surgeries right now. And they could be done right now! If the government provides gender-affirming leave and supports trans and gender-diverse people but then there is no way that they can get medical interventions then they are forced to go overseas and sometimes put their lives at risk for surgeries that are substandard compared to Australia. If they can afford them at all. Medicare has an ongoing review process and according to them, no one has ever put in a submission to ask them to review Medicare based on the needs of trans and gender-diverse people. The Sexual Discrimination ACT was updated in 1984 to say there are legally more than 2 genders and yet the Australian Bureau of Statistics which affects all the other data sets I have mentioned failed for 40 years to update their dataset. Thus forcing every other dataset that relies on it to be discriminatory Still to this day, they will only allow us to identify if their stakeholders ask for it, if an average Australian can fill out the question and if politicians ok it to happen. (How can this be in 2023, surely this is sexual discrimination?) Pathology forms across Australia are still behind in allowing us to identify and there are currently no pathology profiles for trans men and trans women. GP software like Best Practice for doctors cannot pull gender identity onto a pathology form which leads to gender-diverse people being misgendered and at times receiving the wrong reference ranges. The Australian Human Rights Commission has failed to advocate adequately and so there is no one else to hold the Government to account why has this happened? Public Health Systems across Australia still don't have pathways for gender-diverse people and to my knowledge, not one of them provides medical interventions for adults. There is no suitable training for doctors, surgeons medical staff in our training establishments. We suffer many forms of discrimination at Services Australia, Medicare and other departments. Many Public Hospitals systems have only recently started to make attempts at updating their computer systems to include gender and to find ways to reduce misgendering but there is no uniform adherence to the 2020 ABS Dataset for sex and gender. And datasets across the medical sector are not unified. The government's own AIHW website contains no health data on trans and gender-diverse people in Australia because we don't have population data because the ABS has never included us in the census. And finally, the Australian Defence Force has a suicide rate of 8.8% which is twice the national average. They have 85,000 serving members. For that, they get a Royal Commission, and over 50 reports + millions of dollars in funding. Gender-diverse Australians number at least 700,000 (equal in number to Indigenous Australians) with Transgender youth alone having approx a 48% attempted suicide rate and we have never had a royal commission or a federally funded report of any kind that I know of. How is it that the Government can be so apathetic towards a mental health and health crisis for more than 700,000 Australians? It was as recent as 1989 that the last Trans woman was fined for wearing the 'wrong clothing' Before that Trans and gender-diverse people were harassed, locked up, fined and had acts of violence inflicted on them. This has never been apologised for. Psychiatry and Psychology pathologised trans and gender-diverse people for 80 years but then reversed this and there has not been to my knowledge an apology. There is no current federal department for LGBTIQ+ people and no independent organisation to hold media accountable when reporting. We need to stop studying Trans and Gender diverse people and start studying the reasons behind being excluded and ignored and why there is and has been a complete and continuing lack of human rights for this cohort. We must address one of the biggest factors in poor mental health which is a lack of medical intervention and there appears absolutely no initiatives to fix this. That is a complete lack in duty of care. It doesn't take time to make change. It IS time to make change.

Children deserve to walk or ride to school safely. Walking to school improves kids' fitness and independence. However, they are often driven over short distances to school by parents. Parents perceive that their child's journey to school is unsafe on part of or on their whole journey. As a result, our streets are subject to tens of thousands more car trips every year, making them even less safe and clogging up roads with unnecessary traffic during morning drop off and afternoon pick up. Streets without footpaths and crossings with speed limits higher than 30km/h are not considered safe by Australia's safe system approach. The Case for crossings: Research shows that children cannot judge gaps in traffic consistently when cars go faster than 30km/h to safely cross a street On streets where there are no footpaths and crossings, reducing the car speed to 30km/h would prevent most accidents: the stopping distance for a car traveling 30km/h is 13m. Stopping distance for a car traveling 50km/h is 37m. The risk of death or serious injury if hit at 30km/h is less than 10%; compared to 90% if hit at 50km/h. It is an unreasonable risk to place our children in harms way on their journey to school.

Over the course of the past three decades, the local GP’s in town visited the hospital, now only twelve GPs visit the hospital and the town's population has tripled, and continues to grow without adequate health infrastructure. Cessnock LGA now has a jail that has two thousand inmates who rely on Cessnock Hospital for all their acute medical needs. Prior to the Covid pandemic, Maitland Hospital was supplying two doctors four days a week to cover the Emergency Department but when the pandemic hit those doctors were taken away and have not been replaced. The GPs have tried to fill those gaps but on many days through the week and after 11 pm at night there is, more often than not, no doctor available in the emergency department. The Area Health Service has tried to plug those gaps with a Telehealth service but this system is slow and cumbersome and can never adequately replace a doctor in person. The lack of full-time medical cover is leading to an unprecedented blowout in wait times, and transfers out of Cessnock and is placing patient safety at risk.

There is a tendency to use the word victim as though it is a person's choice. People who find themselves on income support are generally in this unwilling position through various circumstances beyond their control, and in the main would rather be independent as opposed to a burden on society. If you ask yourself what story is really behind the person begging for change at your supermarket, what might come to mind? Do you consider Domestic Violence? Mental Health challenges? Childhood sexual assault? Are they a descendant of Australia's stolen generations? Marginalised due to ethnicity? A refugee? With all that we now understand regarding mental health and trauma, it's time to implement it where it can make the greatest impact. As an educated and privileged nation, we need to take responsibility for those most vulnerable and create genuine compassionate revisions to the services that are here to assist. As an example, NSW Health has available information on their website about Trauma Informed services detailing considerations and responsible processes for dealing with clients who have suffered trauma, along with the principles of Mental Health Human Rights. https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/mentalhealth/psychosocial/principles/Pages/trauma-informed.aspx Services Australia and Centrelink need to take a health based approach in their delivery of human services, to honour and properly reflect the Department of Social Services own Access & Equity policy. We need to remind ourselves we do not exist on a level playing field as far as our life experiences. The rhetoric of equal opportunity doesn't apply to those handicapped by misfortune of their circumstances.

Children deserve to walk or ride to school safely. Walking to school improves kids' fitness and independence. However, they are often driven over short distances to school by parents. Parents perceive that their child's journey to school is unsafe on part of or on their whole journey. As a result, our streets are subject to tens of thousands more car trips every year, making them even less safe and clogging up roads with unnecessary traffic during morning drop off and afternoon pick up. Streets without footpaths and crossings with speed limits higher than 30km/h are not considered safe by Australia's safe system approach. The Case for crossings: Research shows that children cannot judge gaps in traffic consistently when cars go faster than 30km/h to safely cross a street On streets where there are no footpaths and crossings, reducing the car speed to 30km/h would prevent most accidents: the stopping distance for a car traveling 30km/h is 13m. Stopping distance for a car traveling 50km/h is 37m. The risk of death or serious injury if hit at 30km/h is less than 10%; compared to 90% if hit at 50km/h. It is an unreasonable risk to place our children in harms way on their journey to school.

All of us have had some experience with someone experiencing chronic illness. Imagine if it were you, and you have faced a life being told, ‘it’s in your head, oh it’s not that bad, I don’t know what’s wrong!’ This is the common experience of people with rare conditions. The social media groups are filled with horror stories of poor treatment, medical gaslighting and a profound level of medical ignorance. It is appalling that here in Australia we do not have adequate trading of Dr’s in these conditions. I think most of us could recall a time when we have had a bad experience with medical treatment, imagine if that one experience was repeated many times over, over many years. At the same time you just continue to get more unwell. This is what it’s like to have a rare genetic condition. I believe that we can demand better from our decision makers. I believe that this is an opportunity for Australia to lead the world in coordinated treatment and research options for those with these conditions.

The UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons - adopted by 122 nations in 2017 and entered into force in 2021 offers a powerful alternative to a world in which threats of mass destruction are allowed to prevail. Weapons that have been outlawed by international treaties are increasingly seen as illegitimate, losing their political status. Three out of four people want the Australian Government to sign and ratify the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, but it hasn’t happened yet. Local councils directly represent communities and ordinary people. As with the Climate crisis, Councils have a powerful role to play in driving important change.

The ability of the media to report freely on matters of public interest is a crucial indicator of democracy. However this right to seek and disseminate information through an independent press is increasingly under attack. If Julian Assange, an Australian journalist can be prosecuted and imprisoned for espionage in the United States, then no media professional or citizen journalist anywhere, is safe to report information exposing government crimes. The United Nations Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer, has called for Assange’s immediate release, asserting that “In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution I have never seen a group of democratic States ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonize and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law.” Australia must advocate for one of its own citizens, now. The people of Casey want to see justice for Julian Assange and call on our elected representative to do all that he can to help bring Julian home.