13 February 2025

Beyond cost of living relief

By Erin Turner

There has been a lot of ink spilled on Australia’s “cost of living crisis”. Governments across our nation, and beyond, are looking for measures to deliver relief. To put dollars back in the pockets of households and individuals.

On one level, these initiatives make sense. Australians are paying more for groceries, utilities, housing and other essentials. More Australians are facing financial stress.

Yet, focusing only on short-term cost increases means we can miss the bigger picture. What if we shifted the conversation from short-term relief to a long-term, smarter solution?

Looking at the whole picture

Last year, the Indigenous Consumers Assistance Network (ICAN) released research that I found powerful, and I think about often.

In their report From surviving to thriving: embedding a well-being framework into financial counselling practice, ICAN outlines how they adapted the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework in their financial counselling service.

ICAN provides financial counselling and capability services across North Queensland, including the Torres Strait, and specialises in developing First Nations financial counsellors and capability workers.

As ICAN notes, there is no single theory or model for the delivery of financial counselling services in Australia. Financial counselling is a direct service to help people in financial difficulty. This relatively young profession can range from educating people about budgets to advocating for a client to a bank or energy company to reduce bills or unfair costs.

In 2021 ICAN started testing a new approach to financial counselling that considers the whole individual, including their needs and strengths. Two key ideas underpin their financial counselling tool which ICAN calls the well-being wheel.

First, is that people are more than just their financial situation. To help someone experiencing financial difficulty, there is value in understanding basic needs across their whole life: the skills and knowledge they bring, their health, identity, connections across family and community, as well as their finances.

The second idea is that people can be in different stages for these six basic needs. ICAN calls these phases surviving, stabilising, building or thriving. This model helps financial counsellors have conversations to recognise where someone may need support but also their strengths.

I recommend reading the entire report which outlines how the ICAN team developed and tested this tool to help their clients. The report outlines how the initial reason someone sees a financial counsellor may be connected to so much more. An initial referral to help a local elder with a council rates bill ended up exploring issues of grief, connection to culture and a desire to reconnect with community. In this case, the financial counsellor worked with their client to find resources to restart their artistic practice, including joining a local art community and selling art at local markets. The financial counsellor in this case did so much more than assist with a bill.

The well-being wheel shows that the challenges we face in life are rarely simple and often connected. Great solutions recognise this interconnectedness.

Beyond band-aid solutions

I think we can take inspiration from the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework when thinking about policy solutions to the “cost of living crisis”.

There have been a range of media-grabbing announcements to address cost of living, including one-off rebates on energy bills and 24-hour fuel price lock-ins. While recognising that immediate discounts can save people money, these are band-aid solutions rather than holistic thinking and long-term reforms.

These solutions do not deal with the big challenges like long commutes many people face due to the high cost of housing pushing people further away from workplaces. Or the challenges people who rent face as they spend more trying to heat and cool their poorly maintained home. They miss the interconnected problems behind the cost-of-living crisis.

One key recommendation from ICAN’s research is increased funding and support for holistic models and practice frameworks in financial counselling. Thinking about the policy challenges we face in Australia, there is value in also developing holistic models to solve policy problems. The well-being wheel is an excellent tool that reminds us to ask more questions about the context of peoples lives and to work with communities to develop solutions for the long-term.