Cory Bernardi (SA, Australian Conservatives) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that:

  (i) on 23 June 2018, it will be 31 years since the then Prime Minister, Mr Hawke, told the Australian Labor Party's election campaign launch that, "by 1990 no Australian child will be living in poverty",

  (ii) in 1990, the Australian Council of Social Services (ACOSS) recorded that 500,000 children were still living in poverty,

  (iii) in 2017, ACOSS indicated that an estimated 731,000 children were living in poverty,

  (iv) census data indicates that the majority of electorates with the lowest household incomes are outside the capital cities,

  (v) a disproportionate number of children living in poverty live in remote communities, particularly Indigenous communities,

  (vi) the last Productivity Commission estimate showed $33 billion a year is spent on Indigenous Australians, and Indigenous-specific spending rose from $1 billion in 1990 to $6 billion in 2017; and

(b) calls upon the government to implement measures in communities with high incidence rates of child poverty that will actually lift families and communities out of poverty.

Question agreed to.