[Australia] Qld report finds high poverty rate despite economic boom

from The ABC

Reporter: Kate Scanlan
ELEANOR HALL: It may not be quite at the pace of Western Australia, but resource rich Queensland is enjoying a boom that's creating millionaires and dragging in fortune-seekers from other parts of Australia.

Fifteen hundred people a week move north of the border, and unemployment in the Sunshine State is at its lowest level in 30 years.

But new figures show many Queenslanders are not sharing in the prosperity, as Kate Scanlan reports.

KATE SCANLAN: Beth is a 45-year-old single mother of one who's been battling poverty for decades.

BETH: It's incredibly exhausting to live in poverty. The ongoingness of poverty, um, is incredibly tedious and incredibly soul-destroying.

KATE SCANLAN: A new report commissioned by Queensland's Council for Social Service has found Beth's not alone. In fact, one in 10, or 330,000 people in Queensland are living in poverty, despite the so-called boom.

KARYN WALSH: We're paying as much attention to the people who aren't benefiting or prospering from the progress and the boom times.

KATE SCANLAN: Karyn Walsh is the President of QCOSS.

She says services for people struggling to make ends meet haven't kept pace with the state's growth, and many people have been left behind.

KARYN WALSH: We have a high rate of homelessness, we have lots of people who aren't getting their basic needs met, and that's really unacceptable in such a prosperous state.

KATE SCANLAN: The report found Queensland was home to more than a quarter of the nation's 100,000 homeless people, and that the state's Indigenous population was the worst affected by poverty, with more than 80 per cent unemployment in remote communities.

Dr John Tomlinson is a Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the Queensland University of Technology.

JOHN TOMLINSON: I'm not at all surprised by this report, and I would regard it as a conservative estimate of the level of poverty, and certainly not surprising.

KATE SCANLAN: He says Queensland's economy isn't as prosperous as it appears on paper, particularly when it comes to employment.

JOHN TOMLINSON: These days you only have to work one hour a week to be regarded as employed, and many of the people who are regarded as employed are in casual labour, or precarious labour, or part-time labour, and so that in fact disguises the level of unemployment.

With some of the WorkChoices programs, people can be working full-time and still be living in poverty.

KATE SCANLAN: Dr Tomlinson says the report is further proof that the poor are getting poorer, and it appears most Australians agree.

A recent Roy Morgan poll of more than 670 people found 77 per cent believed the gap between the rich and poor is widening.

Beth knows how difficult it is to break the poverty cycle.

(To Beth) How has poverty affected your life?

BETH: Well, it virtually affects every aspect of my life. It's, you know, like, it affects my health, it impacts on the raising of my child, it impacts on pretty much every social aspect of my life.

ELEANOR HALL: Brisbane woman Beth ending that report from Kate Scanlan.