‘Shame’ of one in six kids living in poverty, says ACOSS

More than 760,000 Australian children are living in poverty conditions, the nation’s peak welfare advocacy group warns, a situation that brings ‘great shame on our nation’.

Australian Council of Social Service chief executive Cassandra Goldie says a clear answer to tackling the widening gap between the nation’s rich and poor sits before policymakers.

The fact that one in eight people, including one in six children, continue to live in poverty in a country as rich as Australia is a “national shame”, a leading welfare advocate says.

Australian Council of Social Service chief executive Cassandra Goldie says a clear answer to tackling the widening gap between the nation’s rich and poor sits before policymakers, and has been tried already and shown to work.

“Almost doubling the JobSeeker rate (during the Covid-19 pandemic) pulled 646,000 people out of poverty in 2020,” Dr Goldie said. “The increased payments reduced child poverty by a massive 5.3 per cent, giving 245,000 kids in Australia the chance of a better future.”

A new report by ACOSS and the University of NSW released on Friday assesses the level of poverty across Australia, finding 3.3 million people, including 761,000 children, sit below the poverty line, defined as 50 per cent of median after-tax household income after adjusting for household size.

“These figures should be a source of great shame for our nation,” Dr Goldie said. “We can and must do better.”

The “poverty snapshot” uses the latest available Australian Bureau of Statistics data, which only provides information up to June 2020. It shows the onset of Covid-19 and government-imposed lockdowns initially drove poverty up, before extra welfare measures kicked in and reduced poverty to below pre-Covid levels.

In the first three months of 2020, as large parts of the economy shut down, the poverty rate climbed to 14.6 per cent, the report reveals. But the income support payments announced in April took the poverty rate down to a 17-year low of 12 per cent by June that year.

The child poverty rate reduced from 19 per cent in the March quarter of 2020 to 12 per cent by June — a 20-year low, with 245,000 children pushed back above the poverty line.

The temporary measures, subsequently removed, saw single adults receiving social security payments move from $134 a week below the poverty line in March to $146 above it in June 2020, while couples with two children went from being $187 below the poverty line to $361 above it.

“The solutions to ending poverty in Australia are clear,” Dr Goldie said.

“Increasing JobSeeker and related payments to at least $73 a day is a crucial first step, as well as an increase to Commonwealth Rent Assistance and a substantial investment in social housing so that there are enough affordable homes for people on the lowest incomes. We must also invest in energy efficiency and solar retrofits for low-income homes.”

The report notes the poverty gap has steadily increased over the past two decades, with the average weekly incomes of people in poverty now sitting $304 below the poverty line. In 1999, it was $168 a week.

The ACOSS poverty snapshot accords with similar findings made by Anglicare Australia in a report this week, which found the government could raise the rate of JobKeeper and parenting and carer payments to $88 a day, as well as build 36,000 new social housing units a year for $208bn over the next 10 years, less than the $243bn value of the Stage 3 tax cuts.