Effective social policy rests, in no small measure, on a strong community sector
Victoria’s community sector is the backbone of the state’s social infrastructure. It supports people through crisis, delivers essential services, prevents harm, and builds and sustains community wellbeing. It is also a vital part of the connective tissue that holds other reform priorities together.
When the sector is undervalued, underfunded and under-resourced, every other reform is harder to achieve.
Yet the sector operates under conditions that regularly undermine its capacity: short-term contracts, chronic underfunding, persistent pay inequity, workforce burnout, and a digital capability gap that threatens to compound with the passing of time.
Our election priorities are grounded in a cornerstone truth: if the community sector is relied on to deliver essential services across sensitive and complex areas of social policy, then government must fund and support the sector in a way that makes that possible.
We're calling on all parties and candidates to:
- Commit to pay what it takes to get communities through
- Value the community sector workforce
- Support community services to move beyond compliance to excellence
- Equip organisations with digital capability to remain sustainable and responsive
- Reform funding and contracting settings to value long-term impact
You can read more about this section of our election priorities in the full Election Platform (PDF), section 1.