War on the poor: Is SA suffering unprecedented poverty compassion fatigue?
INSENSITIVITY and harshness against those in need is at levels not seen or felt before, services and experts say, as politicians begin to grapple with the growing poverty crisis in SA.
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RICHELLE Irving gets her bed ready for the night in Adelaide’s CBD. She adds a fresh blanket to her makeshift sleeping quarters in the alcove of a State Government high-rise. It’s just after 8pm.
The skeleton staff in the Wakefield St building are still tapping away at their keyboards on the other side of the wall oblivious, or perhaps indifferent, to Richelle’s existence.
The 38-year-old cancer sufferer has for the past 30 nights resided here with a group of six men and women who have been turned away from crowded homeless shelters.
With nowhere to go, they huddle together to wait out the night after a meal from Fred’s Van. There’s safety in numbers.
One has suffered drug addiction in the past, the other’s mum passed away suddenly leading to the loss of her house, and Richelle says she fled to the streets three months ago to escape an abusive relationship.
“We live everywhere and anywhere we can find a spot,” she says.
Rising utility and living costs, stagnant wage growth, an increasingly casualised workforce, underemployment and a lack of affordable housing in South Australia means more people are needing assistance.
These problems were highlighted by social welfare groups, homelessness service providers and individuals in more than 60 submissions tendered last month to the South Australian Legislative Council Select Committee on Poverty.
Overwhelmingly, the submissions reaffirm poverty in SA is growing annually as the gap between the haves and have-nots increases.
Perhaps worse, say political advocates and frontline agencies, is that the haves disregard for the have-nots is becoming “harsher” and is a fundamental attitudinal change described by one as “a war against the poor” not seen in generations before.
“The extent and nature of poverty in SA and the changing proportion of working poor and underemployed living in poverty is growing,” Anglicare SA says in its submission.
“We have noticed an increasing number of men living in their cars because they can’t afford rent or electricity — it’s far from a comfortable life,” says Uniting Communities in its submission.
“It’s all about surviving … electricity is not a luxury.”
The St Vincent de Paul Society’s submission says: “One of the most disturbing aspects of the work of Vinnies is that more and more South Australians are in need of our services.”
It says meals provided by Fred’s Van service, which is operated by Vinnies, have increased 54 per cent in the past four years, while emergency-assistance home visits jumped 30 per cent last year compared to 2016.
In its submission, the SA Council of Social Service reveals almost one in 10 SA households is on the poverty line (calculated at $408 a week for a one-person household). This rate almost doubles in regional SA.
The Select Committee on Poverty is the first of its kind for SA in at least 20 years.
Earlier this month, the committee heard evidence from communities on Eyre Peninsula.
It will continue hearings throughout this year and is expected to report in 2019.
THE five cross-party committee members assembled in May behind Greens MLC Tammy Franks who wanted to examine the extent and nature of poverty in SA and the impact of poverty on access to health, education, employment and other areas.
While Ms Franks says she has been saddened by the depth and breadth of poverty in SA, a growing culture of social apathy and punitive policies had become just as worrying.
“There is a war against the poor,” she says.
“We really want to change the conversation from blaming people who are poor to refocusing the blame on the structures in place that are failing society’s most disadvantaged.”
She points to the recent State Budget in which the Government increased rent to some Housing Trust tenants by up $6.30 a week, and the reluctance by politicians to back a social services and community-led campaign to raise the rate of the Newstart Allowance for the unemployed from $270 (base single rate) to $345.
Newstart has not increased since 1994 and is $134 below the SA poverty line, according to SACOSS data.
Ms Franks said a motivating factor for the committee’s evolution was the reaction of some local traders, residents and community leaders earlier this year to relocate the Hutt Street Centre, which services the city’s homeless, amid claims mentally ill, alcohol and drug-affected disadvantaged people were threatening their safety and economic viability.
“It was not only an attack on the poor but an attack on the services — the very hand that supports the poor,” she says.
Committee member and SA-Best MLC Frank Pangallo agrees: “I do think sections of society have become intolerant and ambivalent to problems facing people in genuine distress.” The human rights of those in need, says Uniting Communities in its submission, are being eroded in the “process of individualising poverty, infantilising those needing income support, and treating everyone as part of an artificially constructed homogeneous grouping”.
SACOSS chief Ross Womersley, who’s been at the helm for almost a decade, says there is an emerging “rhetoric” on poverty, especially the unemployed — both political and social — that is new and “harsher” than 10 years ago.
“We have always had a sense of ‘deserving poor’ and ‘non-deserving poor’ but I’ve heard some of the language around people in need in recent years that is harsher, that attacks anyone who draws on the public purse, and seems to imply that there are more undeserving poor.
“We don’t seem to bring the same harshness to discussion about companies that avoid paying tax.”
In the US in July, a report released by Donald Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers denied homelessness as a “meaningful problem” and that “reduced diet quality as a consequence of limited resources” was not hunger.
The report follows President Trump’s new policy focus on strengthening the restrictions required for safety net funding — attracting the ire of Australian lawyer and UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Philip Alston.
“For almost five decades, the overall (US) policy response has been neglectful at best, but the policies pursued over the past year seem deliberately designed to remove basic protections from the poorest, punish those who are not in employment, and make even basic health care into a privilege to be earned rather than a right of citizenship,” Mr Alston says in a formal report on extreme poverty and human rights in the US.
ST Vincent de Paul Society chief executive David Wark says many South Australians are supportive of those in need when they become aware of their individual plights and the circumstances that led to their struggles.
“I don’t think there is any doubt that there is compassion fatigue out there,” he says. “But the absolute truth of it is that there is big demand and it’s not a sales pitch for more support — it’s a reality — more people are struggling.”
Those in need and those who support them are now pinning their hopes on this committee to reveal the face of poverty in SA as the person next door rather than the stranger in the street, and change the conversations around poverty from one of blame to one of real, invested solutions.
“Sometime it’s easier to blame people for being poor than to create the long-lasting change that is needed,” Anti-Poverty Network state co-ordinator Tammy Headon says.
“The real hope is that this committee will highlight the dire need for systematic policy change in the way people in need are supported so that they are given a hand up rather than being beaten down.”
Poverty in SA
131,945 people or
8% of the population living in poverty
This included 22,350 children
41% in poverty were single with no children
64% of all households in poverty have pensions and benefits as main income source
45% of households in poverty are renters
7.1% of households below poverty line in metropolitan Adelaide
14.8% households below the poverty line in the rest of the state
6224 people homeless on Census night 2016
5607 people homeless on Census night 2006
25,000 calls made to Homelessness Gateway 2017/18
5000 people, with up to 15,000 accompanying children, accessed crisis accommodation and/or homelessness services 2017/18
SOURCE: SACOSS; ABS; Uniting Communities
Haves and have-nots gap between 2003/04 and 2015/16:
Wealth of the lowest 20% income earners drops 9%
Wealth of highest 20% income earners rises 53%
SOURCE: Anglicare SA
Newstart
$273/week (single base rate)— $135 below poverty line
68,000 SA recipients
Push for a $75/week rate rise
SA Government says it’s a federal responsibility
Federal Government says best form of welfare is creating jobs and 99% of recipients receive more than the base rate. Labor wants a full, bipartisan review into benefits
SOURCE: SACOSS; LIB and ALP