Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This week is Anti-Poverty Week, but you wouldn't know it if you'd been watching parliamentary proceedings. Not one new anti-poverty measure has been announced by this government this week. There's been not one speech by a minister acknowledging that this week is here. And it's here for a reason: poverty in this country is growing.

UnitingCare Australia released a report this week that talked about children living in poverty. In Australia one in six children are living in poverty on this government's watch, yet we haven't heard a single mention about or seen a single measure for how they're going to turn that figure around. In my own electorate, the report is damning and heartbreaking. In suburbs like California Gully and Eaglehawk, 50 per cent of the children are living in poverty; that's the poverty rate in some of the areas of my electorate, which is just like so many other regional electorates.

All we've seen from this government is attack. They're attacking these children's families. When you attack people on benefits, you attack the children in those households. When you fail to turn around underemployment and when you fail to invest in jobs, you attack children in these households. The government, in the dying days of Anti-Poverty Week, should do something. Drop these nasty measures and address children in poverty.

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