History of Poverty in Australia - Article Example

158431 One of the best definitions of poverty was provided by Robert McNamara, former President of World Bank as “…a condition so limited by malnutrition, illiteracy, disease, squalid surroundings, high infant mortality, and low life expectancy as to be beneath any reasonable definition of human decency.” www.worldbank.org/poverty/mission/up2.htm It is difficult to say that ‘poor only have to blame themselves’ in Australia for the rather stubborn poverty plaguing the country in spite of many policies and measures. Poverty in Australia is a fact though official measurement of the extent of it does not exist in spite of many researches, surveys and studies. As in any other country, there are many people who fall below poverty level and this depends on the corresponding income level of the continent because international level of income cannot be applied to all countries with the same measuring stick. If done, the entire research becomes totally unreal. Henderson poverty line and other recent alternatives have been used for years to measure poverty line with remarkable success. Australia is experiencing enormous disparity between poor and rich and societal difference. Each country has its own idea of poverty and Australia is not different. The whole world reverberates to the slogan of ‘Make poverty history’; but fact remains that it cannot happen overnight. Media attention in Australia often concentrates on ‘rich getting richer and poor getting poorer’. According to Smith Family research in 2001, 13% of Australians live in povery, 14.9% children live in poverty and 21.8% single parent families live in poverty1. This report also highlighted the link between poverty and prevailing unemployment. Australian poor are not absolutely poor, compared to their counterparts in developing countries. Family’s income could be lower as against other families of higher income. Minority groups and indigenous people in Australia are sometimes referred to as the “Fourth World” and a chasm of difference does exist here. “They experience a lower life expectancy, higher rates of infant mortality, higher unemployment rates, a lower general standard of living (health, housing), high rates of arrest and imprisonment, plus problems of alcohol and other substance abuses” http://www.erc.org.au/issues/text/pa02.htm Indigenous people’s poverty in Australia ranks alongside with that of Bangladesh, where absolute poverty is well-known. Cause of poverty of indigenous communities could be many. It relates to historical factors like dispossession of land, traditional ways of thinking and living, self-pity, reliance on dole and getting used to it, negative thinking etc. Government has shown no great desire to solve the root causes of problems, but have been ready to provide money to help day-today living. Australia is also labelled as ‘unshaped society’ because internal societal problems remain unsolved. Even though the main cause is structural and not individual, people are usually blamed for their own poverty. There are many factors to be considered here. Casual work is less paid and problems of long term unemployment are persisting. Poverty is located in certain areas and highly concentrated in some of them. Only the poorest receive help and in between people are left out. No doubt, this has motivated the left out to some extent. They pay a considerable amount of money in tax and this results in less income running the affect of working hard, leaving no room for further motivation . Also it is noticed that poverty has a habit of descending from generation to generation. A child deprived of opportunities will never attain its full potential and will have an ordinary income. This pattern gets repeated with the next generation who will have a poor father or mother and pattern continues and measures like rent assistance are inadequate. “Even with rent assistance, social security payments for an unemployed two-parent family with two children are only 98 percent of the poverty line. For single parents with two children they are 91 percent” http://www.wsws.org/news/1998/apr1998/pov2-a8.shtml To be relatively poor means to be forced to live in the margins of society, to be excluded from the mainstream. Poverty among immigrants is a separate issue at least for the first few years after immigration. Indigenous Australians still remain the most disadvantageous group and poorest sector in country’s economy. “Aborigines have an economic system of their own It’s very complex, and there are very few white people who have even attempted to unravel certain aspects of it. Most of our people from childhood known what life as a whole is about, what their relationship is to others and what part they should play in life,” Langmore (1983, p.108). Indigenous people face a totally different problem and their issues are very different from those of other Australians. “Not only does the high number of indigenous people living outside urban areas cast doubt on the utility of uniform poverty indicators, but cultural differences also reduce the ability of researchers to interpret income data with any confidence as their benchmarks are based on certain potentially culturally sensitive assumptions” http://www.anu.edu.au/caepr/Publications/WP/CAEPRWP01.pdf To criticisms that government policies are creating poverty, McClelland (2000) says: “Government income support payments do not create poverty, they assist people in poverty. Circumstances such as broken relationships, losing a job, ill health and accidents, not having adequate skills or not living in the right place to find available work can happen to any one of us." http://www.bsl.org.au/pdfs/poverty.pdf Poverty is a contentious political issue where charities too come into picture. There are many charities like Friends of Phan Theit, Red Cross, Comic relief etc. Poverty relief seem to be mainly the responsibility of relief organisations in Australia. It is difficult to say that Government has given any great support to the charities involved. There are a number of charities that are involved in the poverty reduction programme and there are evidences that they have worked selflessly over the years and have made a tremendous amount of differences in spite of sometimes Government hostility. HIV had been another problem amongst the poor people. Australian government has clashed many times with the charities over welfare programmes. Government says charities like St. Vincent de Paul lack insight and do not understand structural reforms, while charities complain of “insufficient level of social security payments; lack of appropriate social service support networks; a decline in the availability of affordable housing and decreases in the available funds for public health, and education and training.” http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/nov2000/welf-n17.shtml There is also a complaint that Government has turned its back from doll schemes. There had been many reports that Prime Minister John Howard increased his attack on unemployed and unemployment benefits were reduced drastically. In 1998, government with the support of opposition forced a scheme in which all unemployed people had to work under cheap labour conditions. Government feels that it is necessary for the unemployed to start working albeit for lesser wages, and they could be right. This forced 120,000 workers to look for voluntary or part time job, and this is always better than no work at all. Government is making unemployed to understand that they have to find jobs for themselves instead of complacent life on dole money and becoming ‘dole bludgers’, a derogatory slang for a lazy individual. ‘Working Poor’ the lowest paid in Australia and had been treated so over centuries, though we cannot escape the relative connection of poverty. Even that ill-paid job is not always easy to find. Elisabeth Wynhausen, a journalist, in her book, Dirt Cheap: Life At The Wrong End of the Job Market2. Pan Macmillan: Sydney, 2005 tells how difficult it is for the Working Poor to get a job and retain it and how ill-paid the job is. “Thousands of Australias low-income families are struggling to pay for lifes necessities, according to figures from an Australian Bureau of Statistics survey” summarises a survey conducted by International Reform Monitor. http://www.reformmonitor.org/httpd-cache/doc_news-1928.html National wage case, according to many economists and researchers did not work the way it was prophesied. “The national wage case has always been touted as the vehicle for improving the lot of the low-paid. In reality, it has proven to be a mechanism for ensuring that workers on low wages undertake no independent struggle to improve their situation” http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/apr2004/actu-a05.shtml Some of the effects of poverty are poor housing, incidence of illness, stress, lesser education level and poor nutrition. Generations of poverty, deprivation, educational backwardness, hesitation, a mutilating lack of ambition has created problems to this group. We come to the conclusion that poor could not be blamed for their poverty and government should be doing more. Still, it is a fact that poor people, especially indigenous group do not help themselves as much as they should. They try to live on dole; try to fit their requirements into the dole capacity, instead of looking for a job that would pay well. There exists a mentality that Australia was originally theirs and later stolen by white people and as compensation, let them look after the real inhabitants and here, John Howard was not totally wrong in forcing them to work. BIBLIOGRAPHY: 1. Beckerman, Wilfred (1979), Poverty and the impact of Income Maintenance Programmes in four developed countries, International Labour Office, Geneva. 2. Landmore, John and Peetz, David (1983), Wealth, poverty and survival, Australia in the World, George Allen & Unwin, London. 3. Simons, Martin (1972), Poverty and Wealth in Cities and Villages, Oxford University Press. ONLINE SOURCES: 1. http://www.erc.org.au/issues/text/pa02.htm 2. www.worldbank.org/poverty/mission/up2.htm 3. http://www.wsws.org/news/1998/apr1998/pov2-a8.shtml 4. http://www.anu.edu.au/caepr/Publications/WP/CAEPRWP01.pdf 5. http://www.bsl.org.au/pdfs/poverty.pdf 6. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/nov2000/welf-n17.shtml 7. http://www.reformmonitor.org/httpd-cache/doc_news-1928.html 8. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/apr2004/actu-a05.shtml 9. Read More