The 2026 Federal Budget has sent a clear, heartbreaking message to the senior women of the Tweed: you are invisible.
While the treasurer boasted about billions for future housing ‘supply’, there is a gaping hole where immediate relief for senior renters should be. We don’t need a ‘road to a new development’ in ten years; we need to know we won’t be evicted next week.
The reality for women like me is a life of ‘cowering’ at home. When everything goes on rent – literally every cent – we are forced into a self-imposed isolation. We want to get out, volunteer, and contribute to the community we’ve spent our lives building, but we can’t even afford the petrol or a bus fare to get there.
We are being trapped in our own homes by the very system that is supposed to protect us.
It is a shameful irony that the government can find $12.3 billion for investor tax breaks and $1.7 billion for nursing home beds, yet ‘nothing’ to increase Commonwealth Rent Assistance to match our local 0.6% vacancy rate. By funding institutional beds instead of security in our homes, they are telling us our only future is to wait for a crisis.
I have worked and cared for others my entire life, only to be met with automated, generic replies from our local MP and ministers. This isn’t a ‘too hard’ problem; it’s a failure of priority. If this is ‘intergenerational fairness’ then it is being built on the broken spirits of the women who built this country.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
