Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ national wellbeing framework risks missing a golden opportunity to understand which Australians are living in poverty, says a community service organisation. Source: The Australian.
Current estimates of who is living in poverty in Australia – 3.5 million people or one in seven – are rudimentary by international standards because Australia does not have an official poverty line or broader poverty measures that take into account other factors like access to health, education, housing and transport, Brotherhood of St Laurence executive director Travers McLeod said.
Mr McLeod, a member of the Albanese Government’s Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee, said almost 50 years after Australia’s Commission of Inquiry into Poverty called for the establishment of a national poverty measure, it has never been done.
It’s time for a more comprehensive understanding of exactly who really is poor in Australia, he said.
“We know the old saying, ‘what gets measured gets done’, but the absence of nationally agreed poverty measures is undermining our efforts to reduce poverty right out of the blocks,” Mr McLeod said.
Mr McLeod said Dr Chalmers’ Measuring What Matters wellbeing framework was a step forward in terms of intent and had potential to improve future policymaking.
“But it is largely silent on the issue of poverty and its significance for wellbeing, and in fact mentions poverty only once,” he said. “This is something that urgently needs to be revisited. There’s a real opportunity here for the Government to improve the framework, and it’s an easy fix.”
The latest Productivity Commission report, released last month, puts the poverty rate in Australia at one in seven, with one in 10 being in persistent poverty. For some cohorts, like single parents and the unemployed, it’s above 20 per cent.
FULL STORY
Chalmers’ ‘wellbeing’ approach a ‘missed opportunity’ to better understand poverty, key advocate (By Stephen Lunn, The Australian)
