Australia’s community services sector is experiencing direct impacts from fuel supply disruption and price increases due to global fuel shortages. With this in mind, Volunteering Australia calls for careful consideration of any cost-of-living, supply, and rationing policy that could lead to unintended capacity and delivery consequences in the charitable and volunteering ecosystem.
Volunteers are a critical part of how essential services operate across Australia. This includes health care, emergency and disaster response, food relief, aged care, mental health, domestic violence support, and animal welfare.
Even without formal rationing, rising costs and reduced access to resources are already limiting participation and service delivery. This has real consequences for communities.
An emergency consultation undertaken by ACOSS with national members has found a significant increase in calls for help from people most at risk, and pressure on frontline services particularly in regional and remote areas.
Amidst fuel shortages and grocery prices rising, frontline services are hearing increasing reports of people on lower incomes having to make impossible choices and going without necessities like food and medicine to get by.
We urge policymakers to ensure volunteers in essential services are given the same access to fuel and support as the paid essential workforce, should rationing and other levers be pulled.
Without this, the systems people rely on every day are at risk.
