Steve Hutchins (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am not sure who the minister is now. They change. You know, as I do, that they change. But the first part of this government response essentially deals with government press releases. The second part has a few pages dealing with the criticisms of the government in relation to the report. The third part deals with the minority report recommendations, which were clearly written in the minister’s office so that the minority report senators could get up and argue the government’s case. The fourth part of the report is once again government press releases.

I just want to make this clear, and I hope Senator Humphries will respond on this: we knew that there could not be any agreed definition of poverty. We made that comment in the report. But we also said in the report that poverty was not, as the government response says, just about income:

Poverty in Australia is regarded as fundamentally about a lack of access to the opportunities most people take for granted—food, shelter, income, jobs, education, health services, childcare, transport and safe places for living and recreation. However, poverty is a multidimensional concept that goes beyond just material deprivation; it also includes exclusion from social networks and isolation from community life.

If you read the government’s response—two years after we brought down the report—you would have to think that all this is about is income. We clearly knew, from the 17 days of hearings we had and the 250 submissions we received, that poverty was not just about income, and we put that in the report.

We had a long debate about what the definition of poverty would be. The minority senators did not agree with what we saw as the definition of poverty, and we understood that, but we had evidence time and again, from every city and town in this country that we visited, that poverty was growing, that income disparities were occurring and that our citizens were being deprived of the social needs that we take for granted in a wealthy nation like ours. That is what we saw in this country. We never said that there was one view or one definition. But, if you read the government press releases and what the government lackeys say in the minority report, you will see that they believe there is.

We also said, as Senator Bartlett has referred to, that we believed there should be a national strategy to combat poverty, that a body should be established to oversee it and that that body should report to the Prime Minister. If you read the government’s response to our report, you would think that it was our idea. Well, let me just tell you, these are the mobs that were in favour of that report: such ‘bolshies’ as the St Vincent de Paul, ACOSS, Catholic Welfare Australia, Mission Australia, UnitingCare, the Brotherhood of St Lawrence and, indeed, state Labor governments—and why wouldn’t they? And where did the idea come from for a national poverty strategy and to have some streamlined involvement of the national government? It came from Ireland—another hotbed of red bolshevism!

That is where I see parts of the government’s response to our report. I could go through page after page, and I hope that at some point Senator Moore, who was as involved and distressed by the growing levels of inequality in this country as I was, will have an opportunity like me to go through, chapter and verse, a number of the things in the government’s reply that need to be addressed. I would also like to report on the government’s reply. Remember, we are talking about a report that was given to this Senate in March 2004. Bear that in mind, Mr Deputy President. A number of initiatives by this government have occurred, which we may not agree with, after March 2004. As I said, we do not necessarily agree with them, but it seems to me that an opportunity has been grasped by the government, by their definition of life, to address these issues of poverty. There has been the Welfare to Work program, announced in the 2005-06 budget. There are the family relationship centres and the family law system changes announced in July 2004. There has been a $33 billion package for government and non-government schools. There has been ‘Building on success’, the CDEP futures direction paper released in April 2005, and subsequent things occurring. There has also been the part A initiative, announced as part of the 2004-05 budget for the FBT. These things occurred after the poverty report came down in this Senate.

As I said, we may not necessarily agree with the direction of those initiatives, but something has definitely occurred in the government as a result of our report on the inquiry in March 2004. You would have to conclude that the government and the minority senators saw something going wrong and that the ministers’ offices were reading the reports and coming to some conclusion that there was something out there that needed to be addressed. I think we can claim some sort of victory—that we widened their scope and opened their eyes to what has been going on in this country under their stewardship. One of the things that I find disturbing, despite the fact that if you read this document you see that the government is addressing poverty, is that it seems to me that it suggests that in a way it is their own fault that the poor are poor—not that they have not had the opportunity to advantages of life that others have—or they have not got off their bums. It seems that that is the way the government approaches it sometimes.

Let me read you a letter to last week’s Age, from a Melanie Raymond from Youth Projects, in which, as I said, it seems that under this government poverty has been eliminated:

Over the past year, our agency has seen a sharp rise in poverty and hunger among disadvantaged and homeless youth. They are sometimes too weak to fully participate in the training that the Government requires them to attend to receive benefits. Add to these problems their poor mental health, generational unemployment, substance abuse, physical and sexual abuse and homelessness, and the picture is bleak. The hundreds we see daily are an accurate human indicator of poverty. They are nobody’s political tool.

This is what this government said this report was: a political tool. Not according to Ms Raymond.