Student-income crisis

Everywhere you turn the cost of living is sky-rocketing through the roof, record highs can be found everywhere from petrol prices to mortgage and interest rates; even the cost of groceries is enough to put a severe strain on the budget for those on an ’average income’. The strain of rising costs is especially being felt by the full-time student population who, according to the ‘Perth Independant Media Centre’ (http://perth.indymedia.org/index.php?action=default&featureview=668), are being forced to survive on “income support [which] is set below the poverty line”. According to the Indymedia site “1 in 8 students can’t afford regular meals”. Whilst some high income earners may scoff at this claim, as a student, I can assure you that it is indeed accurate.

 

The average fortnightly payment from Centrelink is around $380-$430, but when you account for weekly expenses such as rent, food, transport, utilities etc, it is easy to see why many students are barely managing to afford regular meals. As a direct result of the struggling economy, rental prices are steadily rising and the market has never been more fierce. You might assume that the Government would take this into account and balance out the support-income for full-time students, however, this is most unfortunately not the case. Students are expected to survive on the same amount of money in spite of rising costs.

 

Although there is no immediate solution to the problem of student poverty there are some who believe that holding protest will help shed light on the issue. The Perth Independant Media Site – http://perth.indymedia.org/ is promoting the “National Day of Action” to be held in Perth on 20 August at 1pm at the Wesley Church. Hopefully, if enough people can create a bit of noise on the issue, then perhaps the politicians, somewhere between their first-class flights across the globe, might actually sit up and pay attention to the future leaders of our country who are in need of help.