2025-26 Pre Budget Submission - Commonwealth Treasury
As part of the Commonwealth Budget process, The Salvation Army provided a submission to Commonwealth Treasury on the critical asks and recommendations for Commonwealth funding in the 2025-26 Budget.
Our submission focused on the largest areas of disadvantage our services see, particularly Housing and homelessness, Family and Domestic Violence and Poverty and Financial Hardship. The Salvation Army submission broke down these key areas into a shorter, medium and longer term recommendation to have immediate and lasting impacts upon the communities we serve.
Our Housing and Homelessness recommendations included: investing to increase the stock of social and affordable housing; redesigning the Commonwealth Rent Assistance payment; and increasing the stock of transitional and crisis accommodation.
Our Family and Domestic Violence experience led us to encourage the Commonwealth to fully fund the frontline FDV services, fund services to support children and young people as victim-survivors in their own right; and invest in integrated co-responder response model, such as The Salvation Army’s Alexis model.
To address Poverty and Financial Hardship, we recommended that the Commonwealth Government: increase income support payments to 90% of the aged pension as recommended by the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee; increase Financial Wellbeing and Capability Activity funding including funding for case management; and fund financial confidence and empowerment education and resources.
The Commonwealth Budget is scheduled to be handed down on 25 March 2025.