Eliminating Poverty - Speech to the Federation Chamber
Eliminating poverty must be central to the work of this place. Many in Labor are looking to what will be our shared driving force over the next three years, given the decision of the Australian people in May. The Leader of the Opposition rightly said that Labor's policies may change but our values do not. Those values of opportunity, fairness and equality mean nothing if, in this place in this term, we do nothing to address the huge poverty challenges that this country faces.
Poverty alleviation is a cause which is carried through from Labor's earliest roots in the traditional pre-Federation trade union movement to one of the first policy achievements of a Labour government: the age pension. This cause solidifies Labor's unique position as an intervener with purpose in the market economy. It was this view and these values which led us to extend the pension to women in 1908 and to increase the pension a century later under Prime Minister Rudd.
In our public debate, Australians have talked much of inequality, but these conversations focus far too often on redistribution. In recent times, this had led our focus to be on conversations about people who are perceived as having too much, rather than what our focus should be on, which is those who do not have enough to survive. I'm always fond of this quote from John Curtin, which he made on 28 August 1940 during one of this campaign launches, where he said:
Labor is a peace-loving party. Its struggle has always on behalf of the weak against the strong; for the poor, for those who never had a chance …
As we think about some of the debates we have in this place around economic policy, it's worth remembering who it is we're actually here to serve.
In Australia, there are simply too many people who do not have enough to get by. The Australian Council of Social Service estimates there are some three million Australians who live below the poverty line. This is a dramatic figure. Three million of our fellow Australians are without enough to have what we would call that basic experience of being able to fully participate in our society. This has a worse impact than on our schools than it does anywhere else. The Smith Family calculates that there are some 1.1 million children living in households that are below the poverty line. That is 1.1 million children whose families cannot provide the basics and the essentials for them to perform at their absolute best during their schooling years. In a shocking statistic, Foodbank has partnered with 500 New South Wales government schools to provide free breakfasts for children who would otherwise go without.
When it comes to the poverty debate, some will say that Bob Hawke's famous campaign pledge that 'by 1990, no Australian child will be living in poverty' set the cause of poverty eradication back. I disagree. There is nothing wrong with having big policy goals and an aspiration for a greater Australia, especially when those policy goals cannot be achieved by one single policy, one single payment or one single legislative measure. This year, as we celebrated Bob Hawke's life, it became clearer and clearer that the policies he stitched together, indeed, did lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty.
We've also got to avoid the trap of fighting social causes and economic causes separately. The reality is the best social policy is also economic policy. This is true of paid parental leave, true of the Modern Slavery Act—a great achievement of the current government—and true of the Equal Opportunity Act, to name just three. Each of them lifted people out of poverty and were concrete steps towards avoiding a working poor in Australia.
Australians expect us to put the voters first. That means talking about people and their lived experience, not just about institutions, mechanisms and payments. It means engaging with the most vulnerable Australian, and ensuring government support is at a sufficient level. It means doing basic things that make those essential building blocks available for all—things such as making child care affordable for all Australians, and accessible for all children. It means taking action on the pain caused by inadequate unemployment support. I believe this is one of the most pressing tasks of this, the 46th Parliament.
Whatever your political persuasions, unemployment is a cost to society. It costs society in lost tax revenue, it costs us in lost productive labour and, most importantly, it costs us in terms of lost hope for a person who is unable to fulfil their potential. The calls for Newstart to increase will continue to become louder and louder until they become unavoidable for whoever is in government. We should also make sure that when Newstart reform is finally achieved the one-payment-fits-all approach is put in the bin for good. We should make sure these payments actually achieve their stated policy goal. If our policy goal is to make sure that people have a decent standard of living when they cannot get a job, then by logic Newstart is too low because people cannot have a decent standard of living when they are unable to find employment.
The first step for some—those even less fortunate—in lifting them out of poverty is to make sure they simply have a roof to sleep under. In my state of Western Australia, the sluggish economy has meant more and more Western Australians are experiencing homeless. Recently released data shows that in 2017-18 specialist homelessness services in Western Australia assisted some 23,739 people in that year. That is 23,739 West Australians relying on services because they did not have somewhere to call home. That shows the more-quoted statistic—of some 9,000 people experiencing homelessness on census night—in a different light; it shows that we really do have a huge problem in Western Australia when it comes to homelessness.
I recently visited Tom Fisher House, run by St Vincent de Paul. St Vinnies do an amazing job both in their fundraising and in their purpose based community work. I visited with the shadow minister for housing and homelessness, the member for Blaxland. These people are at the coalface of homelessness. Their services are full every single night. We can't just put a positive spin when it comes to homelessness. We need to make sure there's funding for the sorts of services that we've seen actually make a difference. One of them is the Common Ground model. It has been a success in Brisbane and in many other states. Unfortunately, during the global financial crisis, funding was not provided for Western Australia to receive one of those services. I believe it is time that the federal government now funds that service in Western Australia.
When we talk about things like appropriations in the budget in this place—as we just have—we often use language like 'our budget'—and I hear this far too often. We say: 'Our budget will do this. Our budget will do that.' It's not an abstract thing that is owned by someone. It is actually the community's aspirations represented in a government document. It is the same when we talk about inequality—rather than discussing the very real human impacts of living below the poverty line. The National Disability Insurance Scheme is one example where we talked about lifting people out of poverty in a way that truly transformed people's lives. It was about lifting those families and individuals living with disability out of poverty—some for the first time. It's been an amazing achievement and one of those things that will last in this country longer than any of us will serve in this place.
On the Labor side, we've always fought for those who do not have the circumstances, means or power to protect their own circumstances or their own economic situation. It's one of the reasons that I'm a strong supporter of Australia's foreign aid target of 0.5 per cent of gross national income becoming the standard by which we measure whether or not we are doing our bit as good international citizens across the world.
Lifting people out of poverty has driven some of the greatest Australians to serve in this parliament. You cannot read one speech of John Curtin's where he doesn't talk passionately and clearly about lifting Australians out of poverty and building a society where poverty does not exist. Even in the depths of World War II, it was his single focus about the sort of country he wanted to build at the conclusion of the war. In the face of that war, he was able to increase pensions twice in just five years. And for the first time, with federal government funds, they were able to fund creches for women who had entered the workforce for the first time.
This is a complex policy area. There, are no simple solutions. There is no one single policy, but a stitching together of many policies that will hopefully allow all of us in this place to achieve our goal of lifting our fellow Australians out of poverty.