POOR RESPONSE TO THE POOR

Above – “How rich is a city when its people sleep on a street?” Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic

Reports yesterday suggest that as many as 1 in 9 Australians are living in poverty. Poverty is defined as living on less than $281 per week for a single adult without children and adjusted figures for other household units. I don’t know how people survive on $40 per day with shelter, clothing, food and health to consider let alone other expenses.

The proportion of people living in poverty has been rising since 1994 despite Australia experiencing economic growth over all those years. It seems the person in the above shot is not alone by any stretch.

Poverty doesn’t get spoken about as much as it should. Maybe people don’t think it is an Australian problem. Maybe people think people that managed to become poor in these prosperous times somehow deserve it. The major parties do not seem to talk about it. It is a far cry from the days when Prime Ministers would promise to eliminate poverty in three years. As unrealistic a promise as it was, at least poverty was on the agenda.

Of course when there is a vote in it, you can be sure that someone will say something. Well almost. John Howard announced a $4 billion boost to pensions but that has nothing to do with poverty. You see, not everyone reaps the benefit and some of the most disadvantaged people miss out. Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett points out that single parents and the long term unemployed miss out.

Don’t get me wrong. What was promised will go to many deserving people such as people of the disability support pension and the carer’s pension. It’s just when John Howard talks about the benefit of a massive budget surplus and helping people with cost of living pressures you’d think he’d do a little bit more to reach all the people that have been left behind and not just certain sections. You’d think people at the big end of town would cope with a deferred tax cut for a couple of years. Will Kevin Rudd be any better? I doubt it. He set himself down the same path by adopting 91.5% of the Liberal’s tax plan.

Spending time with St Vincent De Paul in Dulwich Hill, I realised how much poverty there was in Grayndler. If it can be so in such a relatively affluent part of the country, it’s clearly a problem more widespread than most people would realise.

The Democrats have a number of practical solutions for combating poverty. These include introducing a national public dental program, boosting Medicare, creating a genuine safety net for workers with at least 8 minimum standards employers must meet, no fee bank accounts for low income earners, increased incentive for affordable housing, increased investment in public housing, raising the tax free threshold to $20,000 so some 2 million low income earners pay no tax, indexing tax rates to the CPI so low income earners do not pay more tax on the same real income, changing welfare guidelines so that people are not punished when they move from welfare to work and they have an incentive to work and pegging student allowances to the Henderson Poverty Line. It may not mean a big bloc of people living in poverty will vote Democrats but that’s not why we do it. We do it because it is the right thing to do.

I hope we get poverty back on the agenda. It is an important issue for me and other Democrats including Laura Chipp whose concern for poverty has seen her take overseas trips to needy communities with volunteer organisations. In such great economic times, it’s important to remember those that have not shared the benefits. Many say that societies can be judged by how we treat our most vulnerable. It’s time we addressed this issue.