Income Poverty in Australia

Cover Photo by RDNE

Report

3.32 million people or 13.4% of the population in 2022 were living below the poverty line, as measured by the international poverty line of 50% median household income as recorded in the ACOSS/UNSW report Poverty in Australia 2022: A snapshot.

This poverty line, in dollar terms, was:

$489 a week for a single adult,
$783 for a sole parent with two children,
and $1027 for a couple with two children in 2019–20.

The report also found:

Seven hundred and sixty-one thousand (16.6%) children or 1 in 6 live in poverty.
One in eight people live in poverty.
Many of those affected live in deep poverty.
People in households below the poverty line have incomes that average $304 per week below the poverty line (the ‘poverty gap’), after deducting housing costs.
- Poverty declined in the early 2000s, rose in the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), stabilised in the decade to the pandemic then declined again through the short-lived government-provided income support such as the Coronavirus Supplement.^[¹^]

Messaging

Falzon emphasised themessaging used to blame the individual for their poverty. Labels peddled by politicians and commercial media outlets include:

demonised (dole bludgers, layabouts, leaners)
criminalised (cheats, fraudsters, liars)
pathologised (mental case, unhinged, crazed).^[²^]

Such individuals are not self-reliant, hardworking, responsible, competing for success and rewarded for their efforts: they have failed. In other words, they are not economically productive individuals and are therefore undeserving of rewards and respect .

Wheeler (2018) draws attention to the fact this competitive individualism is central to ‘neoliberalism’ and involves the key market values for individual behaviour of:

self-reliance
hard work
competition against others
productivity
rewards for self-effort.

These market values of competitive individualism prescribe individual behaviour and are important in shaping public attitudes towards ‘public welfare’ policies.

The demeaning messaging is also a powerful tool promoting disdain more generally for all people doing it tough and influences public attitudes about what kind of welfare policies the government should provide, and who should benefit.

Mental health issues can and do arise due to the constant economic struggle to survive on too little income or living in poverty; negative messaging i.e. propaganda; and for many, the harsh treatment of government income support payments with compulsion and sanctions used to coerce a move from welfare to work.^[³^]

Poverty and wealth inequality, not individual behaviour, are the major causes of the widening gap between the super-rich corporations and individuals and the poorest of the population in wealthy Australia.

Governments, federal and state/territory, can make a difference but more often than not the people living in poverty or living in dire hardship and disadvantage are forgotten in annual budgets – and inequality is further entrenched.

In short, these are political choices made by our governments – the political class.