Why Everyone Deserves a Fair Go

Speech

Transcript - Address to the ALP Poverty Roundtable, Parliament House Canberra - 18 October 2002

Check Against Delivery

Introduction

It is time we reframed the traditional poverty debate.

In modern Australia the fundamental arguments are no longer about circumstances on either side of the Henderson Poverty line.

They are about a much larger group of Australians who have little sense of opportunity or hope.

It is the difference between being comfortable and having choices on the one hand and struggling with little prospect of a better life on the other.

Our current Government has made terms like social justice politically incorrect.

We have witnessed in recent times, a savage assault by Government Ministers on those who do care about poverty – organisations like the St Vincent de Paul Society and the Smith Family.

Worse than the unprincipled assault on the organisations in our community whose important job it is to prick our consciences about our treatment of our poorest neighbours, is the attack that has been waged against the poor themselves.

It has been deliberate and it is relentless.

Cruisers, malingerers, cheats, job snobs, too picky, work shy, mistake prone - the poor have been called it all by this Government.

They have personalised poverty. If you're poor, it's more than likely your own fault.

On this platform of propaganda rests their project of refashioning Australian society away from its egalitarian roots and dismantling the key institutions that provide ladders to opportunity in this country.

How have they been able to do this?

Because discussion about social justice and fairness has been successfully replaced by the language of the market in which the weak and the vulnerable are portrayed as anchors holding back our progress.

They've also succeeded because the public don't engage with Marxist or class rhetoric from the left, or the technical arguments about the utility of the various ways poverty can be measured.

For example, the extraordinarily important work of people like Ann Harding who is with us today has been maligned by right wing think tanks like the Centre for Independent Studies solely to distract us all from the message it tells us.

This message is that a significant number of our people don't have enough income, that in comparison to the rest of us they are poor.

I happen to think that life would be pretty tough if you are a single income couple with two children earning $416 a week whether conservative commentators or anyone else is prepared to call that poor or not.

2.4 million Australians are in this boat. And around 1 million Australians who are in poverty live in a family where one or both adults work.

During a period of strong economic growth the increase in the both the poverty rate and its depth represents a flood of inequality.

Why There is Room for Hope

Our challenge – Labor's and others who care about poverty and the growing poverty of opportunity - is to make these concerns matter politically again.

And on this score, there is room for some hope.

If you look below the headline figures of any recent Newspoll to the questions about who is best able to handle bread and butter domestic issues the Howard Government faces a wall of disaffection.

On welfare, unemployment, education and health the June Newspoll showed a growing gap between the Government and Labor.

For example, following the Budget decision to cut the pensions of 200,000 Australians with a disability Newspoll showed a fourteen point difference - up from seven points in February – between the Coalition and Labor on the question of who is better able to handle the issue of welfare.

Why Poverty Matters

I am hear to tell you, this week marks the start of a concerted campaign – a bread and butter campaign rather than ideological warfare – to get the basic message out there that an increasing number of people who are struggling.

Yesterday the Labor Party took the first step in our campaign to resurrect the poverty debate.

If we had won Government last year we would by now have held a National Summit on this issue.

We didn't so we have proposed a Senate Inquiry to examine both poverty and the emergence of a growing number of working poor people in Australia.

The broad scope of the inquiry is deliberate. This debate is not just about the desperately dispossessed. It is also about all those who are missing out on opportunities.

It is a mainstream debate about real Australians.

And it is a vital debate about our future.

The long-term consequences of inequality are too important to shrug off.

Our future economic productivity and the cohesiveness of our communities are both at stake if we leave people behind today.

Treasuries across this country are recognising that they can no longer ignore the costs of crime, of unemployment and family breakdown that all occur when communities are under stress.

In Queensland and New South Wales community renewal and early assistance programs for families are backed by central agencies that realise that every dollar invested today builds a firewall against future economic and social dislocation.

Not that you would know from reading your daily paper.

Communication

There is a blindness within the media and amongst others, including many politicians at times, about the plight of those who are materially poor, under financial stress or trapped without opportunities.

John Hartigan, the Chief Executive of News Limited remarked recently that:

"In days gone by the most venerated journalists found their news among the people. They congregated in pubs among coppers and crims, they sniffed out their scoops at bars and public places and they talked to people face to face – living the truism you don't find news hanging around the office.

Hartigan's claim is true to a large extent of all of us who occupy relatively privileged positions in the Australian community.

In the best selling book Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich in recounting her experience of being part of America's working poor argues this blindness of the affluent is related to the fact that they are less and less likely to share spaces with the poor.

As public schools deteriorate, they send their kids elsewhere.

As our hospitals fall into disrepair or doctors' stop bulk billing, they can afford the private alternatives.

In her Barton lecture last year, Belinda Probert made a similar point – that a group she described as the new overclass have no need of traditional Australian institutions like public hospitals, income support or public education.

Or disability services.

I mention this because I want point to the recent campaign by commentator Alan Jones who some would regard as a leading member of Australia's overclass.

Jones to his credit and in the interests of a great many Australians has articulated a mainstream campaign for increased social investment in services for people with disabilities – many of who are living in pretty abject circumstances.

It has not been an ideological fight, but rather an appeal to "for God's sake – let's help our fellow Australian's who aren't as well off as us."

The Dimensions of the Problem

We know there are some 800,000 children growing up in families where neither parent works.

There are more than 600,000 Australians surviving on unemployment benefits for an average of one year - in the case of older men – nearly two years.

We also know there are around 100,000 living without a place to call homes.

49% of Indigenous Australians have less than $200 income a week – 12% higher than the non-Indigenous population.

These people are poor and they demand our attention.

But there is also an emerging underclass – people who are striving in vain.

They are our working poor.

According to the ABS there are now 1.2 million wage and salary-earning households suffering financial stress. This is a dramatic escalation

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that over the last three years, a net 600 middle-income jobs have been created, compared with 462,000 low-pay jobs. Nine out of every ten jobs created in the last three years paid less than the average weekly wage.

Many of these new low paid workers are parents trying to juggle work with the important task of bringing up children.

When you consider that families are polarising into those who are work rich and those who are work poor.

When you consider that nearly a third of our entire workforce is now casual making family income more precarious.

When you add this new vulnerable group to the hundred's of thousands of families already living in poverty – you can see how the economy like a rip is dragging down an increasing number of Australians.

One of the most important manifestations of growing poverty is its locational nature.

Research by NATSEM identified that the poorest postcodes in each state and territory generally have poverty rates that are two to three times the Australian average. In contrast, the postcodes with the lowest poverty rates generally have poverty rates that are about one tenth to one-fifth of the Australian average.

Places like Gin Gin in my home state, Ferryden Park in Adelaide, Lightning Ridge in New South Wales and St Mary's in Tasmania – people are really struggling.

They are worlds away from your Kenmore in the leafy inner west of Brisbane, Brighton in Melbourne and Mosman and Balmoral in Sydney.

Our capital cities are like huge centrifuges forcing those with less to the extremities or beyond the boundaries to the regions where housing costs are lower, but just about everything else conspires against them.

Educational attainment is lower.

There are high rates of youth unemployment in these towns and suburbs and high rates of unemployment in general.

People are more likely to be renters rather than own their own home.

This internal migration of the vulnerable has changed the politics of electorates like Richmond, Cowper, Page, Longman, Wide Bay and Eden-Monaro forever.

They are seats not held by Labor but with populations of people who are not being looked after by the current Government.

Responding to Poverty

The interconnection of issues driving poverty is so great that simply lifting government benefits is not enough – important as that is.

Australia needs growth and opportunity not just redistribution and compensation.

We need all the levers of Government and the goodwill of Australians working in unison to address the obstacles that lie in the path of an increasing of our number.

Fairness in my book means that the relativities matter.

Fairness means that the poor need to be kept in touch with the more prosperous, not cut adrift so the rich can live without responsibilities to the rest.

We need to look at the junction between the poverty debate and what I would call ‘the opportunity debate.'

By this I mean an agenda that tackles poverty of opportunity.

The lottery of your birth shouldn't determine your fate.

Nor should bad fortune limit your aspirations.

Nearly 90% of the net new jobs created during the 1990s paid less than $26,000 a year. 48% of net new jobs paid less than $15,600.

In short we need to tackle both unemployment and the quality of work that is available.

I am not hear today to promise you how much Labor can spend, but I will give you a couple of assurances.

We are prepared to stake out the ground.

A good education and a good job are key building blocks to opportunity.

That is why public education is a priority.

We have an obligation to equip our children with the best education we can give, not just the best education they can afford.

We can no longer ignore the fact that housing affordability is a major problem for families and individuals. Public housing has been run down. Rental Assistance is failing to alleviate skyrocketing private rental costs.

Transport is major issue, a critical lifeline for the unemployed and people with disabilities.

As financial stress and outright poverty force people to the fringes, the absence of public transport deprives them of opportunities to work.

We must make work pay.

People who move from welfare to work should be rewarded for that effort.

Government can and should do two things here to assist.

One is to address high marginal tax rates that steal away such a large proportion of earned income.

Another is to breathe new life into the concept of the living wage.

Work must once again represent a ladder to opportunity not a step sideways.

We must build capacity within communities.

That means investing in universal services that get in early and prevent disadvantage.

We must also look at how to help those families who are living day to day, at the mercy of the next unexpected bill, save money and build assets.

It is for this reason Labor is looking at a range of asset-building schemes such as matched savings accounts.

These things all cost money.

They demand Governments have a long-term plan.

Our job is to convince people that the investment is worth it.

Our opponents are arguing the opposite.

Conclusion

In the past people have often remarked that Australia is a classless society.

Egalitarianism in Australia was built on a compromise between workers and their bosses and a set of arrangements across a range of policy areas.

In the past, the unique power of Government to make sure no one was left behind was recognised by all sides - whatever their ideology.

Last year, academic Belinda Probert – an immigrant from the United Kingdom – was struck by the fact that historian's explained Australian classlessness in terms of the observation "we always sit in the front seat of the taxi."

As those at the top become more and more distant from everyone else.

They take the back seat, away from the growing congregation of Australians who are struggling without hope as the number of Australian's who are trapped like this increases.

As poverty is seen increasingly as disconnected to the mainstream rather than what it is – the person next door who isn't getting a fair go.

We have got to make sure everyone has opportunities.

And we must strive to remain a nation where people choose to sit in the front seat of the taxi.