Port Hedland youth voices to be heard in national poverty campaign

Children from Port Hedland have had the chance to tell politicians about the challenges they face, with their experiences set to form part of a national push to tackle child poverty.

Valuing Children Initiative representatives visited Port Hedland from July 15 to 19, working with the local Youth Involvement Council to capture the opinions and voices of young people as part of its end child poverty campaign.

The findings will be delivered to the Australian Parliament in September 2026, ensuring the voices of local young people are heard by our top politicians as part of the campaign.

The VCI team visited Port Hedland in order to learn from firsthand experiences and the impact poverty has on the lives of young people.

Youth Involvement Council operations manager Resa Foai said having VCI come to Port Hedland was a blessing for the community.

“It’s such a cool opportunity to the VCI come up here to Port Hedland and it shows their commitment to tackling this issue,” she said.

“What VCI is doing is capturing the voices of children and validating their voices by going to Parliament.

“It’s done with passion, it’s done with heart, and it’s done with integrity.”

Port Hedland is viewed as one of Australia’s wealthiest regional communities due to its central role in the mining industry and its significant contribution to national exports.

According to the 2021 census, median weekly household income was $3434, substantially higher than the West Australian and Australian averages.

However, regional assessments have highlighted ongoing challenges with housing stress and poverty affecting many local families, particularly those on low or fixed incomes.

The Australian Child and Youth Wellbeing Atlas shows South Hedland has a socio-economic disadvantage score of 989, which is below the national average of 1000 and indicates higher levels of disadvantage.

In comparison, the wider Port Hedland area scored 1011, suggesting that living conditions and levels of disadvantage vary significantly across the community.

This pattern is reinforced by the WA Primary Health Alliance’s Pilbara Needs Assessment 2022–2024, a regional assessment of health, wellbeing and service access across the Pilbara.

East Pilbara recorded a score of 937, substantially below both the WA score of 1016 and the Australian benchmark of 1000, indicating relatively high levels of socioeconomic disadvantage.

The report also identified a regional housing crisis characterised by very high rental costs and difficulties securing accommodation.

Food insecurity was highlighted as a significant concern, with food prices increasing substantially with distance from Perth, including costs that were 37.9 per cent higher for fruit, 31 per cent higher for non-core foods, and 30.6 per cent higher for dairy products in remote areas.

VCI campaign lead Sarah Quinton said the campaign was created out of frustration that children experiencing poverty were not seeing enough meaningful change.

“We launched that campaign because of a frustration that children living in poverty, nothing was ever changing for those children,” Ms Quinton said.

“We weren’t really understanding the impact that income poverty was having on the wellbeing of children, particularly children who were missing out on things like material basics.”

Ms Quinton said poverty could affect children’s everyday lives, including their ability to attend school and feel included.

“Things like food, having the right uniform to be at school, or most importantly, having a home because we do know that there are children in Western Australia, in one of the richest places on earth, that are sleeping rough,” said Ms Quinton.

During the campaign’s visit to Port Hedland, there were multiple workshops involving children across different age groups, with participants asked about what makes life good, what challenges they face, and what changes they want decision-makers to make.

Ms Quinton said the findings of the workshops would be used when they talked to politicians in Canberra.

“We’re going to take those voices and collect all of that information into a report, and we’re going to take it to Canberra, to Parliament House, and we’re going to be having an event where politicians can come and listen to those stories,” Ms Quinton said.

“When children speak, it is their own lived reality and they are the experts in their own lives.

“Honouring their rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, but also getting the truth from the child and their lived experience, is the most authentic way we can develop policies for children, by children.”

The campaign also gave kids the ability to directly record a message through a device, which will be presented to Parliament House where politicians will be able to hear directly from the children what they want changed.

Politicians will be able to send a message back to the children so they will be able to hear what politicians have to say in response.

Ms Quinton said the wider Port Hedland community had a role to play in supporting children and families experiencing hardship and poverty.

“People have the power to change things for children in their community everyday,” Ms Quinton said.

“Port Hedland children have really something important to say, and it is every adult’s job to listen to children, but not only listen, but to respect their views and then to act on what those children have said.”