AUSTRALIA: Poverty on the Rise Down Under

By Stephen de Tarczynski Reprint | | Print |

Stephen de Tarczynski

MELBOURNE, Oct 16 2008 (IPS) - Australian cities rank high among the world’s most liveable in ‘quality of life’ surveys and car bumper stickers proclaim the nation as ‘young and free’. But an increasing number of people are living in grinding poverty, a situation that will likely be exacerbated by the ongoing global financial crisis.

Mark, 50, stands outside St Mary’s House of Welcome in the inner Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy, where he comes regularly for meals. Currently homeless – or as he describes it, “living in nature” – Mark’s lunch was prepared by volunteers with help from local politicians, who have given their time as part of the Australia-wide Anti-Poverty Week.

The Oct.12-18 anti-poverty drive has drawn hundreds of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and some 10,000 peopleto participate in a range of activities from rallies and forums to exhibitions and publications.

Among the themes linked to poverty raised during the week are education, health, work and housing.

Mark told IPS that the awareness-raising effort regarding the causes and consequences of poverty and hardship which Anti-Poverty Week – coinciding with the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty on Oct.17 – is badly needed.

“It means to me that they’re really trying to make an effort to increase awareness among the population as a whole to try and alleviate poverty or get the system moving,” he says.

Inside the House of Welcome – a day centre for homeless people which provides a variety of amenities and services, including meals, showers and toilets, as well as recreational activities – the tables are full of people eating lunch while others await their turn.

Sister Roseanne Murphy, the centre’s manager, says that there is an increasing need for her organisation’s services. And that increase is not just coming from single men like Mark, who make up the House of Welcome’s primary client base.

“I’ve been espousing the whole need for the employed poor for at least three years and now it’s really come to fruition. We get phone calls from all over the place for aid, most of which we can’t deal with,” says Sister Murphy.

Australia may still be seen as “the lucky country” but Sister Murphy says that poverty is getting worse, evidenced by the House of Welcome’s need to prepare food parcels for the homeless.

“When I came to this agency seven years ago we didn’t do any form of food parcels or anything like that. It was a rare thing,” Sister Murphy told IPS.

Statistics also indicate that an increasing number of Australians are falling into poverty. Figures from the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of New South Wales show that in 1994, less than eight percent of Australians were living in poverty. Five years later, that figure had increased to over eight percent, while in 2004 just under 10 percent of Australians were found to be living in poverty.

It is a trend that has continued. A 2007 paper by social justice group Australia Fair reported that despite Australia’s strong economic growth in recent years, 11.1 percent of the population – numbering more than two million people – were living below the poverty line in 2006.

According to the report – which, like the Social Policy Research Centre and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, set its poverty level at 50 percent of the median disposable income for all Australian households – this figure includes some 412,000 children living in situations of destitution.

And with the repercussions of the global financial crisis expected to be widely felt in Australia – Prime Minister Kevin Rudd this week announced the allocation of an Australian dollar 10.4 billion (7.2 billion US dollars) “economic security strategy” to shore up the nation’s economy in the face of what he described as “the worst financial crisis in our lifetime” – the number living in poverty is anticipated to grow even more.

“I think all the projections are that we’ll certainly get an increase in unemployment,” says the national chair of Anti-Poverty Week, Julian Disney.

He told IPS that Australia’s low unemployment rate – currently about 4.3 percent – hides a lot of under-employment, as those who work for as little as one hour a week are defined as being ‘employed’.

“We’ve got one of the most part-time and casualised workforces in the developed world,” says Disney, arguing that this is a factor in the steady rise of poverty in Australia.

“We also have got a growing divide between those who are better off and those who are not and a growing tendency to move in the direction of an underclass,” he says.

But there are other factors influencing the burgeoning poverty rates.

“There is a greater tendency for poverty to be linked with disabilities or mental health problems,” says Disney, which he argues is due, at least in part, to the policy of de-institutionalising people with disabilities or mental health problems, leaving them with a serious lack of support.

“They’re now more out in the community or on the streets,” Disney says.

And while there may never have been a typical ‘face of poverty’, Disney has noticed changes, particularly among younger Australians.

“There are many more people ranging from their late ‘teens to, say, forties or so in severe poverty now than there were in the past,” he says.

Back at St Mary’s House of Welcome, Sister Murphy says that “agencies are now struggling to meet the demand” as more people look for assistance.

Asked how there can be so much poverty in a country as wealthy as Australia, Sister Murphy implies that this apparent contradiction can be explained by the dialectics of the country’s social structure.

“Part of the way that, sadly, the western world works is that you have to have a certain number of people who are poor to have a middle section and then to have a wealthy section,” Sister Murphy opines.