Howard's Australia: 1 in 10 in poverty

from The Guardian Australia

Bob Briton

Two million Australians 9.9 per cent of the population including 365,270 children are currently living below a very austere poverty line. The figure is up from 7.6 per cent ten years ago. A home of one's own has switched from being the great Aussie dream into a joke for many young people. Around 600,000 Australians are languishing on years-long waiting lists for dental treatment. Wage-earning households are paying 18 per cent more for the same goods and services than they did five years ago. Pensioners are paying 15.8 per cent more. Aboriginal health is an internationally recognised scandal.

These are some of the grim facts and conclusions brought together by the Australia Fair coalition of welfare groups in their recently released report, Australia Fair: International Comparisons 2007. The damning document was based on research from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the University of NSW and international comparative reports from the UN and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The poverty line in the study was set at the most common international standard 50 per cent of median income for a single person. In Australia this is a miserable $249 per week. While almost one in ten Australians wage a daily battle to survive on this amount, the Federal Government remains in denial. Australia is among only eight of the 30 OECD countries not to have a poverty reduction strategy. The government let the subject die when a 2003-04 Senate inquiry into poverty broke up over the issue of how to measure the phenomenon in Australia. No doubt an investigation of poverty would have exposed a number of the myths surrounding the "booming" economy built up in the Howard era.

Members of the Howard front bench have all taken pot shots at the Australia Fair report. "I have difficulty with their measurements of poverty", the PM said. "It is logic that if there are fewer people out of work there must be less poverty the greatest driver of poverty is people without jobs." Logic? The report confirms that, despite official denials, jobs growth in the past 15 years has mostly been in very low-paying part-time casual work. Australia now has a sizeable population of working poor.

While family payments have softened the impact of the neo-liberal agenda, housing costs in particular have taken their toll. Australia has inherited a high rate of home ownership sixth highest in the OECD. This is set to change. House prices are now higher in Australia than in New Zealand, Britain, the United States, Canada and Ireland. The supply of public housing is the fourth worst among OECD countries. Rents have skyrocketed. Initiatives like that taken by the City of London which has mandated that a percentage of new housing must be affordable, are not likely given the current political climate in Australia.

Outside government circles, reactions to the report confirm the conclusions about growing poverty and social exclusion in Australia. Dr John Falzon of the St Vincent de Paul Society regularly sees the effects of low pay, lack of job security, a welfare system that breaches people too easily, rising rents, health and transport costs. "Considering we've had up to 15 years of sustained economic growth, it's a national scandal to think we had it within our means to structurally address the causes of poverty and inequality in Australia", he told ABC News.

In Bendigo in Victoria, one in four residents are living below the poverty line including an astounding 33 per cent of Eaglehawk residents. "Bendigo's got significant pockets of disadvantage and areas where families are under real stress", chief executive of St Luke's Bendigo David Pugh told the Bendigo Advertiser. "We know there are lots of families who regularly choose between putting food on the table and paying bills."