Victoria, Queensland community centres have stable salary funding

In Cobargo's case, the community centre was established by community members, including Danielle Murphy and Chris Walters, within days of the Black Summer bushfires.

The community's needs have since evolved and so has the renamed Cobargo Community Access Centre, managed by Ms Murphy and Ms Walters.

It helps people deal with all levels of government, everything from admin to calling government departments to advocate for the resident.

It connects people to service providers and is a place where people can get support and education from mental health workers and solicitors, for example.

"Shoalcoast Legal Services will do information sessions on topics like wills, power of attorney and cybercrime that we feel empowers our community," Ms Murphy said.

Ms Walters said NSW community centres rely heavily on grant funding.

Funding is for specific projects and therefore short-term and not flexible.

"To have something a bit more stable would be hugely beneficial because a lot of our resources are taken up applying for grants," Ms Murphy said.

Community centres, which are not-for-profits, also spend hours competing for funding against much larger NGOs and local councils.

"We shouldn't be in the same funding pool," Ms Murphy said.

Ms Walters said many NGOs' bushfire relief programs end on June 30.

"They will leave, help will cease and it is community-led organisations like ours who will remain in the community."

She said those programs were supposed to support communities for three years but half of that period was interrupted by COVID.

"People will be left floundering and we are not equipped to pick up all the work that still needs to be done.

"If we had funding for 2.5 people per week like Queensland we would be laughing," Ms Walters said.

In June 2022, recognising that community centres are the cornerstones of their communities, the Queensland government almost doubled the minimum funding base for government-funded community centres to $230,000 from $124,000.

"Centres like ours fulfil a function that would otherwise fall to government at a much higher cost than if community centres were funded," Ms Walters said.

Looking ahead to the next disaster, "if places like ours were funded we would be up and running instead of having to be established and that would cut out all the need-identification work of other organisations coming in to help", Ms Murphy said.

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