Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I support the motion and am pleased to be addressing this chamber on such an important issue in advance of Anti-Poverty Week. I will focus my remarks on Australia although we could, of course, spend much time talking more broadly about the global poverty issues.

The motion is fine as far as it goes, but it seriously understates the issue. The member for Goldstein is not known nationally for his modesty or understatement or indeed his care for inequality—not that I have heard in many of his public remarks—so in that sense the motion is progress, or an achievement. It is true that Australia is prosperous and has a high standard of living, but to say that poverty remains an issue for some people seriously understates the problem. I am going to allow myself a brief Mayor Quimby moment—one of my favourite characters from The Simpsonsand quote myself. In my first speech I said,

I worry that the language of social justice has become too soft, that we must speak more clearly about poverty and stark, indefensible and growing inequality.

  …   …   …

Despite 25 years of continuous economic growth, inequality in Australia is at a 75-year high, and … More than 2.5 million of our fellow Australians live below the poverty line

Two point five million Australians is more than just 'some people'. I heard you quote the 2012 report, and I had a look also at the 2014 report by ACOSS, which regrettably showed that, in fact, the percentage of Australians living in income poverty—at less than half the median income—had increased from 11.8 per cent to 13.9 per cent. It understates the issue globally to say we have low levels of poverty by international standards. If you have a look at the 2013 chart of 35 OECD countries, you will see that Australia is, in fact, 26th highest at 14 per cent, well above the OECD average of 11.2 per cent. In my view, the OECD comparators are far more appropriate for a country like Australia than looking at a long list of developing countries around the world. As the member for Kingsford Smith observed, there is disturbing evidence that child poverty mirrors broader poverty levels in Australia. The 2014 UNICEF report into child wellbeing found 13 per cent of Australian children live in poverty—these are just numbers, but behind them there are kids going hungry every night in Australia, without the basics to be well and to succeed.

As has been said, you cannot really talk of poverty without talking about inequality, because poverty is one end of the spectrum, albeit an arbitrary line. Growing inequality is one of the most important macro issues in the world at present. These are not just fuzzy notions of equality or fairness; it is an economic issue because economic exclusion fuels social disharmony and alienation can lead to anger. This is recognised as a priority economic issue by those left wing radicals at the World Bank, The Davos forum, the IMF and the OECD. Consensus is growing that inequality has a significant negative impact on growth and, conversely, that reducing inequality can enhance growth.

The motion does not acknowledge the impact that this government's policies are having on poverty and inequality. You can search this government's election platform on the web and there is no mention of poverty—you hear the Prime Minister talking about it in response to a few transcripts. There is no mention of inequality that I can find. We have heard about housing affordability, which I agree is a primary driving cause of poverty. There are so many families in Australia effectively living in poverty due to housing stress. Unfortunately, the government has nothing to say on this: no minister, no plan and no certainty for the National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness, whose funding expires next year—it is limping along from year to year, cut after cut. If I had to pick one of the cruellest cuts that I have seen from the Abbott-Turnbull government, it would be those to benevolent societies. I understand and can buy into, to some degree, a view that welfare does not solve poverty. You have to get people into employment. I accept that, but, if you were to pick the cruellest cuts, they would have to be those which were made in the 2014 budget to benevolent societies: the $100,000 that the Springvale Benevolent Society or the Dandenong District Benevolent Society got to feed the poorest in our community, people who had literally nothing—no blankets, no saucepans. The government absented the field.

The final point I would make is: just recently the Minister for Social Services announced plans to force some young jobseekers into poverty, to force them to wait four weeks to be eligible for Newstart. This is disgraceful. Poverty is not a personal choice. For most people, unemployment is not their preference. For most people, unemployment is a failure of the market or governments, not the individual. Labor does not support making life harder for those who are struggling. Living in poverty is not a crime or a sickness. Listening to some people on the right of politics—not the rhetoric we have heard today—and their relentless quasi-religious focus on economic efficiency and letting the market rip, I cannot help getting the feeling that they would seriously consider ploughing poor people into the fields for fertiliser if it were a more economically efficient use of their carbon, not that many of them believe in carbon. But I commend the motion. It is a platform on which to have a discussion.

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