‘A heaviness in my heart’: This WA mum lives on $441 a week

When Laura got divorced, she gave up her teaching career to care full-time for her disabled daughter, Charlotte. Laura lives in a two-bedroom house in Northam with her four children and with a carer’s pension she earns $441 a week.

That’s $934 below the poverty line.

“Having worked so hard to study and get myself a career that I was passionate about and loved, I had to relinquish that,” she tells me as I sit with her as part of the No Place for Poverty movement.

Alex Hughes (left) with Len, one of the people with lived experience of homelessness and poverty who works as an advocate with No Place for Poverty.

“Poverty is a heaviness in my heart. It steals from the childhood that I wanted to give my children. It steals from me the satisfaction of being the mum I always desperately wanted to be to my babies.”

Then there’s Sharlene who fights back tears as she shares her story with me, about how she secured a full-time job and became the first Noongar financial counsellor in WA to pass the government’s online course. Even still, between caring for her elderly mother and supporting her granddaughter, she can go days without eating lunch to ensure her granddaughter can eat at school and take part in social sports.

Kim lives in Perth and while no longer a child, she still bears the mental scars of childhood poverty. Her mother and father both died when she was young and as an orphan, she had to stretch her youth allowance, with half going on rent, leaving only a small amount to be used sparingly on food.

These West Australians’ stories are also stories of systems that were meant to help people but are failing. It used to be that the Australian concept of the fair go extended into a collective belief, structures and policies that allowed equal chances of success. Past political leaders shared this view, attempting to make our systems fairer, even if this meant swimming against the political current.

In the 1987 federal election campaign, then Prime Minister Bob Hawke vowed to end child poverty by 1990. It was a lofty goal, and while he did reduce it by 30 per cent, almost 40 years later as we head to another federal election, one in six children in WA now live below the poverty line.

Prime Minister Albanese’s vision of an Australia “where no one is left behind” rings hollow when we see growing inequality and poverty all around us. And as for the Coalition, it’s difficult to recall any substantial vision they offered for a fairer society before Saturday’s historic defeat.

There may be a strong focus on the cost of living crisis, but where is the leadership on poverty?

Without leadership that prioritises respect, compassion, and equity — the very principles of a fair go — people suffer.

For every $100 spent, we get back $124. This budgetary shift is seemingly a no-brainer, and we need a leader who is willing to publicly back this idea.

In Western Australia, economic inequality has skyrocketed. Since 2009, the bottom 90 per cent of Australians have received just 7 per cent of economic growth per person, while the top 10 per cent have reaped 93 per cent of the benefits.

Can this change? Yes, with bold action.

We could lift one-third of people out of poverty tomorrow by reallocating just one per cent of the federal budget to raise JobSeeker to the poverty line — a recommendation made by the government appointed Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee three years running.

For every $100 spent, we get back $124. This budgetary shift is seemingly a no-brainer, and we need a leader who is willing to publicly back this idea. Poverty is a social issue fraught with stereotypes, misunderstanding and tropes. At No Place for Poverty, we look to share the stories of people living in poverty so that together we can all better understand this issue, and build support for the simple solutions.

As Laura’s 16-year-old son, Josh, said to me: “The quickest cure to poverty is more money, more of an income.”

“Poverty is so unique in so many different situations, we need to make it so that no matter how you’re not working, and how you’re not getting enough of an income, there is a way to ensure that you have enough to live on and survive,” he said.

With people like Josh around, there might be hope for future political leadership. However, for things to get better now we need bold, visionary political leadership – that ensures our tomorrows are better, because of our actions today.

Join No Place for Poverty at www.noplaceforpoverty.org.au.

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