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INFORM-A^CTION

Issue Number 42 - February 2002

Getting Real About Poverty

The public debate on the extent and depth of poverty in Australia always seems to be bogged down by the issue of how poverty is measured. Late last year the Smith Family, together with the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (NATSEM), produced a report which identified the persistence of poverty in Australia in a decade of economic growth, 1990-2000. Soon after,both the Federal Government and the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) criticised this research on the basis that the methodology, specifically the poverty line used in the research, was flawed. The CIS concluded that the NATSEM estimates were inflated. Thus followed a dry and inconclusive public debate on methodology. The reality of poverty in the community was lost in the argument about whether the correct national estimate was 13.0%, 8.7% or another figure.

A similar situation occurred in 1995 when the Social Action Office, QCOSS and Lifeline released the report of poverty and disadvantage in Queensland entitled Drawing the Line on Poverty. The Goss Labor Government at the time attacked the use of a national poverty line in the Queensland context and proceeded to discredit the estimates. In the end the State Treasury worked out its own Queensland poverty line and poverty estimates - this proved to be only marginally different from the estimates in our report. After that futile exercise, the State Government went to ground and chose to ignore the comprehensive plan of action developed in the report.

These events suggest three things:

The poverty debate is highly contestable with differing views about what poverty really means in a given context and, then, how to go about measuring it;
Governments will take cover behind the methodological debate on estimating the rate and extent of poverty in the community;
There is a real need to secure agreement about a poverty line that is acceptable to governments, academics and the community so that some consensus could be reached about the extent of poverty in the Australian community. Arguably, this would establish the basis for getting real about responding to poverty.

Poverty was once a central part of public policy discourse in western-style social democracies. In recent times, it has lost ground and been overtaken by a new policy language in which concepts of social capital and social exclusion have blurred the reality behind the word.

Getting real about poverty remains a moral challenge for the Australian community. Zygmunt Bauman has captured the essence of the problem for us:

The poor will always be with us, but what it means for the poor
depends upon the kind of ‘us’ they are with.

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		INFORM-A^CTION Issue Number 42 - February 2002 *Getting Real About Poverty* The public debate on the extent and depth of poverty in Australia always seems to be bogged down by the issue of how poverty is measured. Late last year the Smith Family, together with the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (NATSEM), produced a report which identified the persistence of poverty in Australia in a decade of economic growth, 1990-2000. Soon after,both the Federal Government and the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) criticised this research on the basis that the methodology, specifically the poverty line used in the research, was flawed. The CIS concluded that the NATSEM estimates were inflated. Thus followed a dry and inconclusive public debate on methodology. The reality of poverty in the community was lost in the argument about whether the correct national estimate was 13.0%, 8.7% or another figure. A similar situation occurred in 1995 when the Social Action Office, QCOSS and Lifeline released the report of poverty and disadvantage in Queensland entitled Drawing the Line on Poverty. The Goss Labor Government at the time attacked the use of a national poverty line in the Queensland context and proceeded to discredit the estimates. In the end the State Treasury worked out its own Queensland poverty line and poverty estimates - this proved to be only marginally different from the estimates in our report. After that futile exercise, the State Government went to ground and chose to ignore the comprehensive plan of action developed in the report. These events suggest three things: The poverty debate is highly contestable with differing views about what poverty really means in a given context and, then, how to go about measuring it; Governments will take cover behind the methodological debate on estimating the rate and extent of poverty in the community; There is a real need to secure agreement about a poverty line that is acceptable to governments, academics and the community so that some consensus could be reached about the extent of poverty in the Australian community. Arguably, this would establish the basis for getting real about responding to poverty. Poverty was once a central part of public policy discourse in western-style social democracies. In recent times, it has lost ground and been overtaken by a new policy language in which concepts of social capital and social exclusion have blurred the reality behind the word. Getting real about poverty remains a moral challenge for the Australian community. Zygmunt Bauman has captured the essence of the problem for us: The poor will always be with us, but what it means for the poor depends upon the kind of ‘us’ they are with. Next Newsletter Article Newsletter Index