Thirty-five years after an Australian prime minister predicted no Australian child would be living in poverty, one in six are.
That’s according to a new report by the Australian Council of Social Services and the University of NSW released for the start of Anti-Poverty week.
It found 3.7 million people, or 14.2 per cent of the population, were living in poverty in the years 2022-23, equating to one in seven Australians. That includes 757,000, or one in six, children.
“This is unacceptable in one of the wealthiest countries in the world,” said Dr Yuvisthi Naidoo from UNSW’s Social Policy Research Centre.
The report shows poverty has increased since the COVID-19 pandemic, when the JobSeeker rate was temporarily doubled.
About one in eight Australians were poverty-stricken in 2020-21, or 12.4 per cent of the population.
But steep rent rises have disproportionately affected Australia’s most vulnerable.
Across 2021-23, the median advertised rent for units rose 40 per cent in Sydney, 34 per cent in Melbourne and 41 per cent in Brisbane.
And while the poor are getting poorer, the rich are getting richer.
According to the Australian Financial Review’s annual Rich List, there has been a 7 per cent increase in the number of Aussie billionaires in the past 12 months.
Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, is worth $38.11 billion.
ACOSS CEO Dr Cassandra Goldie AO said the federal government needed to take urgent action.
“While the Albanese government has taken some steps to reduce poverty, such as supporting minimum wage increases and small income support increases, it must do so much more to turn this trend around,” she said.
“The government must fix woefully inadequate income support payments, set targets and boost social housing and commit to full employment.
“It should also adopt time-linked targets for poverty reduction to hold us all to account.”
Anti-Poverty Week co-chair Simon Schrapel said it was time Australia adopted a standard measure of poverty and got serious about reducing it.
“We are calling on the federal government to immediately adopt a dual measurement of poverty that includes income thresholds together with measures that address other dimensions of essential living costs such as housing, health, education, electricity and food,” he said.
The report was based on data provided by the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, funded by the Department of Social Services.
The longitudinal study of Australian households publishes its findings each year.
It defined the poverty line – based on 50 per cent of median household after-tax income – as $584 a week for a single adult and $1226 a week for a couple with two children.
People in households below the poverty line had household incomes averaging $390 per week below the line, while families with children in poverty were on average $464 below the poverty line.
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