Some time ago, the environment group I worked for engaged in a comparison of the results of campaigning for the protection of land and habitat as against buying tracts of land for conservation. As I recall, the result was pretty stark – buying properties, even with the backing of big philanthropic money, saved far less land from environmental threats (e.g. land clearing, forestry, mining) than could be saved by campaigning to create national parks and/or to stop threatening processes. It was a crude consideration given the complexity of nature conservation, but on a dollar per hectare saved basis, it was not even close. At the time I felt lucky to be working in a campaign organisation.

Now I find myself working in a peak body for a service-provision sector, but I was reminded of those old debates when I reflected on this year’s South Australian state budget. Compared to the environment movement, the social service sector are not great campaigners. Mostly ours is a disempowered sector of professionalised service-providers who do not think in terms of public policy change. Much of what passes for campaigning (although the preferred term is “advocacy”) rarely goes beyond writing to Ministers or responding to government consultations.

A Concessions Campaign

Yet on occasions, I get to contribute to campaign approaches, and in 2021 SACOSS began a campaign to fix the system of South Australian government concessions. Concessions are government subsidies, rebates and payments to help those on low incomes afford essential goods and services, but as our initial State of Concessions report found, the system was fundamentally broken. It included unfair barriers to eligibility, and poverty premiums which meant that those on higher incomes often received greater support than those in most need.

Unlike most sector advocacy, our concessions campaign had a clear path from the beginning. It was not “whinge and pray” advocacy, or a belief that we just need more research and more facts to give to governments. We had a staged plan – what I have been known to call “a plausible path to victory”. It was basic text book stuff, and lots of such plans go wrong. Indeed, it was unusual that this one played-out fairly close to the text book version, but that does not make it magical or unreplicatable.

We began with the research and report showing that the system was broken, but rather than letting the evidence speak (or not), we used the 2022 state election to seek promises for a government review of the system. That was an exercise in publicity and political engagement, not policy. That done, we kept some attention on the issue to see the promise delivered, and then participated in the technical debates and influenced the direction of that review. The goal was always the 2024-25 state budget – a goal happily shared by an engaged Minister and department.

It was not all an inside game, or simply assuming the review would deliver. Given that the Minister was supportive, we directly lobbied other parts of government for funding of the outcomes to improve concessions. We did occasional media commentary to keep the issue in the public (or at least the politicians’) eye, and engaged in opportunistic advocacy in different government processes along the way. All pretty standard stuff, but always with an eye on the formal government process and the campaign strategy.

While the government review proceeded in 2023, we wanted to maintain external momentum – because government processes can bury, as well as facilitate, change. With philanthropic support, we hosted a community panel to consider the issues and feed into the review process. This was an exercise in participatory policy-making which garnered publicity and kept pressure on government, but also ended up substituting for the traditional top-down government consultation.

All up, it was not campaign rocket science, but nor was it mendicancy or reactive submission-writing.

The review resulted in a significant package of measures announced in the 2024-25 South Australian state budget, including:

• a one-off payment of $243 to existing Cost of Living Concession (CoLC) recipients,
• one-off discounts for children’s sports fees and school charges for low-income households,
• doubling the amount of the annual CoLC payment to renters,
• opening access to more concessions for asylum seekers and share-houses,
• providing access to more concessions for those in waged poverty,
• and increasing access and/or payments for some other specialised concessions.

This amounted to an ongoing $60m increase in expenditure going to people on low incomes, and $130m in one-off payments. At the beginning of the campaign, I would have called $60m for those changes a significant win, even without one-off payments – which will themselves be useful short-term cost of living relief.

Reflections

All that said, these concession changes did not come simply because we campaigned cleverly. Often the best campaigns don’t succeed. While our campaign was broader and more sustained than much sector advocacy in our state, it was still mild and relatively small-scale. And of course we did not get everything we wanted. There were still holes in the government’s package which reflected, in part, our failure to get engagement from a couple of Ministers and departments. Further, the big one-off concession payments announced in the budget were not part of the review or our campaign – but the lasting changes certainly were.

Our campaign could well have come to nothing in different circumstances. Yes, we had the imprimatur of an election promise and a proactive Minister for Human Services driving the review, but the broader political economic context of a “cost of living crisis” was crucial. There was great pressure on the government to “do something” to address the crisis. And when the government needed to act, there was a set of responses where the policy leg-work had been done and could be easily implemented.

[I am sure someone once said that people make history, but not in circumstance of their choosing].

All campaigns need a measure of luck and the right environment, but in this case there was also a fortuitous and useful flow-on. With the government under pressure to address financial pressures on many households, the prior policy leg-work done by the department and prompted by the campaign meant that the government’s cost of living relief package was built around concessions. It was therefore targeted towards those on lower incomes who are likely to be hit hardest by the crisis. That stands in contrast to the federal budget where the energy bill reliefs were delivered to all and sundry, and the bulk of the tax cuts were delivered to – well, it is hard to be polite about the tax cuts, even in their revised form.

I don’t want to get too carried away about a small state-based campaign. Despite the $200m headline, state concession payments are still at the periphery of income distributions, and will make only a marginal difference to households. After all, income and income supports are primarily federal government responsibilities. However, the concession increases are still a win – a distribution from the treasury to those on low incomes. And importantly, I would argue that they will make far more difference to far more households than charity and service provision to what can only ever be a small minority of impacted households.

Bottom Line

It is not that service provision is not important, but the budget win on concessions did remind me of the importance of campaigning. It is why I want to scream every time I hear that I (or at least my money) can change the world “one child at a time” (with said child usually looking forlorn and helpless), or one animal or species (usually cute) at time, or one village at a time. That is the stuff of fundraising and marketing, not of political economy or social change.

Despite it being a hard slog with uncertain and often disappointing outcomes, campaigning for change is crucial because the bottom line is that to end poverty you need to redistribute wealth, not just provide counselling or relief services. To end domestic violence you need to change men’s behaviour, not just provide services to victim-survivors. To end racism, you need to address white privilege and power, not just provide better services to close a gap or support migrant communities.

Of course, we need to fund those services and supports, but we also need social change that will make those services redundant. That said, I know concessions are not revolutionary and systemic change. By definition, they are band-aids on an inequitable system – but the example still makes me (re)believe in campaigning and the possibility of bigger change.