Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of the government response to the Senate Community Affairs References Committee report on poverty and hardship entitled A hand up not a hand out: renewing the fight against poverty. I must say, at the very least, that I am quite disappointed with the government’s response to this report. Yet again we see the government failing to recognise that poverty is a real and growing issue in Australia and that there need to be active policy changes to address it. The government continues to invest time and resources in denying the problem that would be much better spent addressing it. I believe its response to the Senate Community Affairs References Committee report is flawed and mean-spirited. The Australian Council of Social Service estimates that two million people live in poverty today—one in 10 Australians. This is based on a poverty line of 50 per cent of average disposable income, as used in the UK and Europe.

In 2002 the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed groups at risk of poverty include 58 per cent of Indigenous people, 28 per cent of jobless people, 28 per cent of people renting, 22 per cent of single parents and seven per cent of older people. On average each night there are 100 homeless Australian families who cannot find places in refuges. A quarter of a million Australian job seekers have not had substantial work for a year or more.

Much of the government’s response to the report is spent disagreeing with the figures in the report. How much longer is the government going to keep on about the accuracy of poverty figures? The fact is that poverty exists in this country and, whether it is 10 per cent or seven per cent, it is still a national shame. Please, let us stop arguing about the figures and get down to actually doing something about it.

Australia is experiencing record wealth. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the Treasury journal Round-Up shows that the recent rise in national prosperity is unprecedented. More wealth was accumulated in the six years to June last year than in the previous 39 years. But instead of everyone becoming wealthier the wealth is consolidated in the hands of a few. The gap between rich and poor is not getting smaller. This is not just rhetoric; it is fact.

Indigenous Australians still face a greater risk of falling into poverty than any other sector of our community. The Australian Future Directions Forum held earlier this year found that Indigenous disadvantage was the highest priority for Australia. A disproportionate number of Indigenous Australians live in poverty. Their average life expectancy, as has been well spoken about in this chamber, is 17 years less than non-Indigenous Australians. That is similar to people living in Bangladesh. The fact is that we are 10 times richer than that country.

A study by the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at ANU showed that nearly half of all Indigenous children live in families with incomes below the Henderson poverty line. This is quite shocking. More than 50 per cent of Indigenous families have no adult employed. Furthermore, poverty rates are still higher among those Indigenous families where at least one adult does have a job, because of lower wage rates, larger families and a lower proportion of families likely to have two breadwinners.

I take particular issue with the government’s response to the committee recommendations in certain areas—for instance, the government’s accusation that members of the community are using this report as a political tool and therefore its findings are not relevant. Poverty is an issue that needs bipartisan support. To simply dismiss a Senate committee report on the grounds that it is politically driven is not a good approach from the government. The government response then goes on to talk about the programs that the government has in place to deal with poverty, yet these programs will result in an increase in the number of working poor. Single mothers and those with disabilities are being forced onto Newstart with resultant decreases in payments. The new IR legislation will lower minimum wages and will have a disproportionate impact on those on lower incomes. The combination of these two effects will have an unprecedented impact on those who are already on low incomes.

Then you look at the impact on carers. The 2003 ABS Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers indicates that carers are over-represented in the lower household income quintiles. These carers were identified as being at particular risk of low wellbeing in the Australian Unity Wellbeing Index survey of 2005. And now they have also passed legislation that takes further funding away from these carers.

The suggestion that the poverty figures used in the report are misleading is nonsense. To dismiss the report’s recommendations on this ground is further evidence that the government are not serious about tackling poverty. Continuing to argue about the extent of the problem rather than getting on with addressing the problem tells me that they are not interested in looking at it at all.

ACOSS states that recent research into the poorest families in Australia indicates most are jobless: four out of five families earning the lowest 20 per cent of income had social security payments as their main source of income; 72 per cent of the 424,000 families in the bottom 20 per cent are jobless; 48 per cent are single parent families; and families with older children, who are also over-represented, are 27 per cent of the bottom 20 per cent.

Braddon, in the north-west of Tasmania, is supposed to be the poorest electorate in Australia, in spite of claims of unprecedented prosperity. There is no effective public transport linking coastal towns and no capacity to access health and education services. There is poor health, especially dental health. I believe these issues will be made worse by recent changes in legislation, such as Welfare to Work, which disadvantages in particular single mothers and those with disabilities.

In 2005-06, $1.4 billion in GST went to Tasmania; none was spent on infrastructure in Braddon. This situation will continue to get worse if the government does not stop arguing about statistics and acknowledge that poverty is an issue in Australia. Putting more pressure on families that are already suffering through changes to IR will disproportionately impact on those already on low incomes, and on single mothers, who are already disproportionately represented in poverty figures. That is not the way to address poverty. Stop arguing about the statistics and get on with making their lives better.

Debate adjourned.