[Comment - Australia] John Falzon: Charity starts at poverty's source

NOTHING will convince the battlers - including more than 1million people assisted by the St Vincent de Paul Society every year - that they've never had it so good.

Latest figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development place Australia seventh from the bottom of 29 countries, ahead of Canada, the Slovak Republic, Japan, the US, Ireland and Mexico.

Investment in affordable housing, health, education, transport and child care is uppermost in our consideration of how Australia can move forward with a strategy involving all governments.

The Centre for Independent Studies, however, seems to be fixated on welfare. It would prefer Vinnies and other charities to stick to dishing out the soup instead of asking questions about the causes of deprivation.

Brazilian archbishop Helder Camara once said: "When I give bread to the poor I am called a saint. But when I ask why they have no bread, I am called a communist." This is what Peter Saunders (Opinion, June 10) has done.

Our research not only draws attention to the growth in income inequality but outlines various ways in which this growth could be measured.

Private income growth ignores the people who have no private income. While we have this reservation about this measure, it is hardly a moderate increase in inequality when the lowest 10 per cent get an increase of $26 and the highest 10per cent get an increase of $762.

On this measure, high incomes rose by almost 3000 per cent above the bottom incomes. On any reading, it is a mathematical illusion to suggest that the bottom 10 per cent are the winners.

The absolute figures in the Australian Bureau of Statistics survey of income and housing demonstrate that from 1994-95 to 2002-03, low incomes (real mean weekly income of $269) experienced a 12 per cent rise ($32.28); middle incomes (real mean weekly income of $449) received a 14 per cent rise ($62.86); and high incomes (real mean weekly income of $975) received a 16 per cent rise ($156).

It is no surprise therefore that the share of disposable household income of the lowest 20 per cent fell from 8.3 per cent to 7.7per cent between 1996-97 and 2002-03. In the same period, the share of the highest quintile rose from 37.1 per cent to 38.3 per cent, while the share of middle income earners held steady.

While Saunders dismisses this disparity in the growth between the low and high incomes as moderate, those who must survive the daily grind in the lowest quintile would not.

He cites an ABS comment that the movements in inequality are not statistically significant. But the ABS commentary says: "The statistically significant movements are the increase in [the ratio between the top and bottom 10 per cent of incomes] and the decline in the share of the total income going to persons with low income."

Australia has the fourth highest rate of poverty among OECD nations. We have one in seven children living in poverty. We have two million people looking for work or more work, and nine out of 10 jobs created in 10 years of economic growth paying less than $26,000.

The CIS response to the issue of income inequality is one of obfuscation and diversion. In the end, the best Saunders can do is to say that income inequality has grown but that this is nothing to worry about.

He may like to look at the St Vincent de Paul Society's history. Our founder was not St Vincent de Paul but Frederic Ozanam, a student at the Sorbonne who went on to become a professor. He adjured his confreres to "not be content with tiding the poor over the poverty crisis" but to "study the injustices [that] brought about such poverty, with the aim of a long-term improvement".

Ozanam wrote: "The issue [that] divides the people of our times is a social issue, whether society is merely to be a great exploitation to the advantage of those who are strongest, or a society in which everybody devotes their energies to the common good and above all to the protection of the weak."

Was he a communist? No. But if he were alive today and sought to work for a more just and compassionate society, I have no doubt he would also come under attack.

John Falzon is national operations manager for the St Vincent de Paul Society.