Youth Homelessness Matters Day is this Wednesday, April 5 and I implore you to support the cause and spread the message of ending youth homelessness.

I always say that youth homelessness and the way we treat our disadvantaged young people is our national disgrace.

We live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, yet we still can’t manage to give the support and care to those who need it most.

Homelessness is often invisible to everyday Australians. Sure, we pass those sleeping rough in our major cities, but the realistic embodiment of homelessness is much different.

Homelessness is not just sleeping on the streets. People you come across in your everyday life can be homeless without you even noticing.

Homelessness can include couch surfing, living in refuges and sleeping in cars.

You may not visibly recognise these people as homeless, but their experience is real and traumatic.

Homelessness is not knowing where you will stay on any given night, not having somewhere safe to go after school or not having any fixed place to call home.

At Youth Off The Streets, we tackle all sides of homelessness. Our Street Walk in Sydney ensures we reach out to those sleeping rough on the streets, while our outreach services employ locally and provide events to bring the community closer together.

We provide crisis accommodation and homelessness services to young Australians and we have recently increased funding to tackle family violence, the leading cause of homelessness in Australia.

I go where I am needed most, and the areas I work in have seen great improvement as my youth workers connect with the local young people.

This Youth Homeless Matters Day, won’t you stop, think and spread the message about our invisible homeless?

Our road rules need common sense application, not draconian enforcement.

I’ve lived in Goulburn for the past 23 years and I still travel the Hume Highway between Sydney and Goulburn regularly, once every three to four weeks, and most of the time it’s a trip to Sydney in the afternoon and back home to Goulburn late at night.

A usual encounter on the late night trips home is the number of semi trailers and B-double combinations that are supposed to be restricted to 100km/h. I sometimes observe them travelling at over 100km/h and occasionally closer to 110km/h on my SatNav, particularly on down hill sections of the highway.

It is an absurdity that the small difference of 10km/h is deemed to be appropriate as a speed differential between these classes of vehicle by our road authorities. The differences between cars and semi trailers when it comes to stopping or manoeuvering or other safety considerations are chalk and cheese, and yet the idiotic 10km/h distinction continues.

And so to the [Post] story from Friday, March 31, where a driver who sought to expeditiously get past two B-double combinations travelling together on the Hume reached a peak speed of 126km/h to ensure the overtake was achieved quickly and safely and then when sufficient distance was achieved from the trucks, reduced speed again, only to be pulled over and issued with a penalty notice for speeding, while the two trucks rumbled on by.

The car driver tried to seek justice in this situation via a court hearing, but was denied any such justice in the court, with the editorial claiming the judge even suggested the overtake should not have been attempted and the car driver should have “hung back”.

What planet are our road authorities and this judge living on?

Apparently, while once completely taboo, now as motorists we are allowed to exercise our judgement and cross double unbroken lines if we feel it’s safe to do so to allow the required space when passing a push-bike rider.

A stroke of the pen in an arbitrary fashion in the inner sanctum of the halls of road authority power has allowed this because the push-bike lobby ‘advocated’ about the safety of push-bike riders, but when this driver was concerned about his safety and exercised his judgement to extricate himself from a situation of being stuck behind a couple of B-double combinations … that’s not OK and he was dealt with according to law with a reported suggestion from the judge that a consequence of speeding could be a serious accident.

Well, judge and others who would share similar sentiment, sitting back behind ‘speeding’ trucks can have serious consequences too, but apparently not as long as you stay behind them at no faster than 110km/h! ... as though sticking below the 110km/h speed limit would distinguish between safety and catastrophe upon encountering any such road hazard.

Waste and water management company Suez is inviting community groups to apply for individual grants of up to $15,000 to fund projects that contribute to a healthier environment and stronger community.

We’re encouraging all … kindergartens, schools, charities, sporting teams and local organisations who want to make a positive impact in their community – from playgrounds and sustainable water systems to hunger relief programs and projects rehabilitating the natural environment –  to apply for grants between $1000 and $15,000. Applications are open until May 5 at 5pm.