Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you to colleagues for their support for this matter of public importance, which was slightly overwhelming. I have pleasure in bringing forward this matter of public importance today and in being joined by a Greens and a Democrat senator. It was designed to allow the government to support the motion as well. I hope they will when they speak. Unfortunately, we were not able to get a government senator to co-sponsor the matter. It was designed to be an expression of the will of the whole Senate.

In a society like ours, where most people enjoy prosperity and opportunity, it can be easy to forget that not everyone has it so good. There is a lot of focus these days on property prices and share market trading and very little focus on those who are doing it tough. Around the world hundreds of millions of people struggle to survive without the basic requirements for a decent life. For most Australians the harsh reality of daily life for so many people is a world away from the comfort and prosperity of Australian life.

International Day for the Eradication of Poverty provides us with an opportunity to reflect on the presence of poverty and disadvantage and to focus on what can be done to tackle it. I would like to focus close to home, on poverty and disadvantage in our community. Despite our prosperity and the opportunities most of us take for granted, poverty, disadvantage and social exclusion in our community are very real. We need to open our eyes to the life experiences of those Australians who struggle to make ends meet, who lack access to services and opportunities and are excluded from the social and economic mainstream. In focusing on disadvantage in our community, we have a duty to also focus on solutions—what we can do to ensure that Australia’s prosperity and opportunity is open to all Australians. Above all, we need to be positive. We are a wealthy country. We can and we must work to ensure a decent chance for every Australian. Labor believes that we need a long-term, national plan to meet a renewed national commitment to tackling poverty in our community.

Depending on how you define it, hundreds of thousands if not millions of Australians are currently living in poverty. ACOSS estimates that two million Australians—10 per cent of us—live in poverty, based on a poverty line of 50 per cent of average disposable income. Even by the most conservative estimate put forward by the Centre for Independent Studies, poverty affects around one million Australians. The people most at risk in Australia include Indigenous Australians, people with a disability, the unemployed, single parents, people living in lone-parent households, renters, homeless people, and people living in rural, regional and remote areas.

Living in poverty means constantly struggling to make ends meet. According to Anglicare’s State of the Family Report 2006, there are hundreds of thousands of Australians who routinely struggle to meet basic costs like food, rent, electricity and gas bills. According to Anglicare’s report, more and more Australians are relying on emergency relief from welfare organisations to meet these basic expenses.

But poverty is about more than just income; it is also about social exclusion—being disconnected from the community. People may not be able to afford the cost of transport to visit friends or be able to afford to make phone calls to family. I have had to help a number of men who have been unable to afford rental accommodation in our suburb any longer because of the rising cost of that rental accommodation. They have been forced to suburbs which they have no connection to, because they cannot afford to live in the area where they have lived most of their lives. In many disadvantaged areas, there is a lack of community facilities, basics such as parks, which allow children to interact and parents to meet other members of the community. Social exclusion can also be the result of problems with self-esteem, trauma, hopelessness, disconnection from the workplace, poor social and interpersonal skills and deeper mental health issues.

Aboriginal Australians are more at risk of falling into poverty than any other group in our community, with ACOSS estimating that 58 per cent of Indigenous people are at risk. This disturbing fact is a result of the extreme social and economic disadvantage that Indigenous people face on every available indicator, be it employment and income, education, Third World health conditions or housing. It is a national disgrace that Indigenous Australians face such extreme levels of disadvantage. I echo the sentiments of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Tom Calma, that it is simply not credible to suggest that a country as rich as ours cannot solve a health crisis affecting around three per cent of our population. We can do it. In the debate around poverty generally and Indigenous disadvantage in particular, we need to confront that pessimism that these problems cannot be solved. These problems are fixable if we have the will and the right strategy. It is up to us to make the decision to tackle and end these problems.

There is no single way to define or measure poverty. It is a complex problem which calls for complex solutions. I do not want to engage in the sort of definitional argument that the Howard government seems to have been so focused on: the quibbling over how you define poverty. In its submission to the Senate’s inquiry into poverty, the St Vincent de Paul Society, which does tremendous work, said:

Regrettably, the polemical debate over poverty lines has distracted rational discussion on solutions to a known problem.

It was dead right. The Senate committee report included 95 recommendations. Unfortunately, the Howard government rejected every single one of them. Again, its response was to quibble over the definition of poverty rather than to focus on the issues.

Labor is serious about addressing poverty in Australia. We believe that the care we provide for those in need and the opportunity for all to realise their potential are important measures of our society. Tackling poverty not only is a responsibility but offers huge benefits to all Australians by fostering a more inclusive, fairer, more cohesive society where all members of our community have a decent chance to realise their potential. Tackling poverty requires a commitment based on the values of justice, equity, compassion and a fair go for all. A strong economy is a necessity if we are to improve the life chances of Australians in need, but it is also the case that tackling poverty is a task that goes way beyond simplistic assertions that the best form of welfare is a job. Poor people in this country face complex issues that need to be tackled. Just referring them to the need to get a job does not tackle those issues. We need national commitment to getting results and a strategy for doing so.

On previous occasions, I have outlined some of the approaches that a Labor government would take, including developing integrated services; building a national program that engages local communities; providing long-term funding arrangements to facilitate certainty in planning a strategy, because we are plagued at the moment by short-term funding and programs that end; research and data to monitor the impact and effectiveness of programs; and long-term benchmarks and goals to ensure political accountability and keep governments focused on the task. If you do not set goals, then you never reach them. If you do not hold yourself up to be measured against the attainment of set objectives, you will not make progress.

There is no better time than now to recognise and confront the poverty and social exclusion that many in our community experience. It is something that this parliament must play its role in. Part of the challenge is accepting the reality of poverty and disadvantage in our community. We cannot tackle the problem until we acknowledge that it exists. But we do need to question the assumption that poverty will always be with us, and we have to focus on solutions.

One of the energising things about these issues is the number of groups and individuals in the community who work so hard to tackle disadvantage. I would like to acknowledge their hard work and commitment. Recently I met the National Council of Churches, which runs the National Make Indigenous Poverty History campaign. Today I met the Catholic Social Services people, who are having their annual conference in Canberra. They represent all the people who work for services on the ground—helping disadvantaged Australians, visiting prisons, supporting communities and supporting families in crisis.

Yesterday I also met some young people from Cabramatta High School who are engaged in the Micah Challenge and Make Poverty History campaigns. They challenged me and other politicians to make a difference on these issues. They asked very hard questions like ‘Why aren’t we making progress?’ and ‘Why aren’t we able, given our wealth, to end poverty?’