Fairer Australia Campaign Public Meeting

Chris Dodds

President, NSW Council of Social Service

I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land.

When I was asked to speak today in the context of the Campaign for a Fairer Australia, Istarted to list the things that the Council of Social Services believe in. Then two days ago I changed the start because I read, of all people, PP McGuinness, and he summed up what is an attitude towards the Council of Social Services - to give the right wing journalist credit, he can write well. He claimed that ACOSS, the Australian Council of Social Service, had a vested interest in keeping poor people poor. Indeed, Mark Latham, in rejecting ACOSS' criticism of his tax policy, implied the same thing. Certainly in the last two conservative governments, Amanda Vanstone, the present Minister, and a number of other federal government ministers implied the same thing.

I have to say that the movement that is the Council of Social Service, ACOSS at the federal level, NCOSS at the state level, is just an affiliated group of welfare organisations, like, for example, the Tomaree Neighborhood Centre.

This neighborhood centre here, like neighborhood centres around NSW, provides emergency cash relief for people who can't pay their bills. It provides access to a no-interest loans scheme so that people can actually afford to buy refrigerators and washing machines that don't use a huge amount of electricity like the old ones. It provides access to community housing through a regular visit from the CityLink community Housing Organisation. It helps host the Homecare Service of NSW. There is a whole range of organisations that service this community out of this neighborhood centre. That is a typical member of a Council of Social Service. And if on Monday or Tuesday not a single person walked in the door not seeking emergency cash, this neighborhood centre would be over the moon, they'd be really happy. They have no vested interest, they don't make money out helping people that are poor. They are paid by the government because the government's benefits are not high enough to deal with the day-to-day crises in their life.

Government benefits for unemployed people, for single parents, for aged pensioners who don't have superannuation back-up, are border-line, enough to live week-to-week, fortnight-to-fortnight, as long as there is no crisis, as long as you don't need your teeth fixed. They have to go to a dentist because there is no Medicare for dental care. As long as you don't have to live through winter with no decent heater, and the only heater you have being a $20 bar heater from Woolworths that just chews through electricity and leaves you with a $700-$800 electricity bill. These are the day-to-day things that happen to people who live on the margin. The services that make up the council of Social Service are there helping. And from those experiences of help, policies are developed, that say, look, these are the sorts of things that are happening to Australians, let's try to fix them. While I think that is fine, try to accuse the Neighborhood Centre, the Tenants' Advice Service that I work for, the local women's refuge, the Salvation Army, the St Vincent De Paul of having a vested interest in keeping people poor is disingenuous at best and dishonest in reality.

Those services aren't about keeping people poor, they are about trying to retain the social justice this country was built around, to look after poor people. After the Depression, the Australian people said, 'Enough is enough, we are never going to let our people live through an experience like that again'. We introduced things like unemployment and sickness benefit, and we made sure that aged pension was at a decent level. It took a long time, but we eventually got it pegged at 25 per cent of average male weekly earnings, so that people who retired, particularly those who worked in industry and other jobs where there was no superannuation, at least had enough to live adequately. We saw the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, and Medibank and now Medicare, introduced so that people would be looked after. In fact many people want to see that rolled back.

If you don't agree with those policies - fine - but don't argue that those people who advocate for them have a vested interest - vested interest means you are making money out of something - it's just not true.

I've started with poverty. First of all, one of the interesting and challenging things I've had to do in the last few years in my role with ACOSS and NCOSS is to speak with overseas students at the University of Newcastle about poverty in Australia. That can be really embarrassing when you've got a number of African students where, when you talk about poverty, it is about people just dying from malnutrition. But I do have to point out that poverty is relative. There are a number of definitions of poverty that are about your ability to be involved in the society around you. When we talk about poverty in Australia, on the whole that's what we are talking about - you're ability to participate as a citizen. There are many people in Australia excluded from the sorts of things that most of us take for granted. But we also must be very aware that there are a number of people in Australia who live in abject poverty, absolute poverty. On any one night there are over 100,000 Australians who don't have a secure roof over their head. They may well be sleeping in a car, some may be in refuges, and unfortunately many are on the streets. And of those on the streets, a great number of those are people who suffer from mental illness. If there is one outstanding scandal in Australia, it is the lack of resources that are applied to the mental health system, and NSW is particularly bad. It has been identified, there have been parliamentary inquiries, and everyone knows what has to be done. It just needs that political commitment to actually spend that money.

There is one group within our society affected by absolute poverty and that is the indigenous population. On every measure, at every level, in education, in employment, and most importantly, in average life expectancy, there is such significant differences from the national average that it is a national scandal.
In terms of poverty, the single most easily fixed issue, one that both major parties have failed to address, is the growing discrepancy between the groups of government income recipients which previous Labor governments and the existing conservative government did peg pensions to an indexed rate. But they did not index unemployment benefit and student allowances. Each time the Age Pension, Disability Pension and Supporting Parent Pension gets a CPI rise, it is at the whim of the government of the day, and in many instances the government has failed to pas those increases on to Newstart Allowance or students on Austudy or Common Youth Allowance. In fact there is a growing discrepancy between those two rates of benefit which leaves people depending on unemployment benefit and students living below the poverty line, while the pension benefit has maintained an equivalence to the Henderson Poverty Line.

When I was very young, I spent one night going around prior to the 1972 election, painting slogans on walls, and one of the slogans I painted was "100,000 unemployed Australian - Billy McMahon has to go'. At that time, 100,000 unemployed was a scandal, but we've got to the point where 6% unemployment is welcomed as an achievement, that is 600,000 people denied an opportunity to work, and that's welcomed as an economic achievement. That's 600,000 Australians who aren't contributing to taxation, whose homes don't have any experience of work, where children are in an environment where they don't see the breadwinners going to regular work. It remains a scandal that a political party can say, 'we've got it down to 6%, that's really good,we don't have to do any more about unemployment. Let's just make sure inflation doesn't go up'. Unemployment remains an issue.

Of course, you only have look around to see the single biggest cause of poverty, and that is housing costs. We are now in a situation where public housing is no longer public housing, it's welfare housing. To get into public housing, your situation has to be so dire that in fact you need more than public housing. You need all kinds of support services. There are over 90,000 people on the public housing waiting list in NSW alone. Housing remains a crisis. Even in the traditional refuge of low income earners, the caravan park - here you know more than other people, if you had no money and you didn't own a house, you could retire to and get a bit of security in a caravan park. Cottages in caravan parks are costing over $150,000 now! I live in Tighes Hill and the other day I shopped at Woolworths, crossed the street to get the bus home, and I looked in the window of a real estate agent. I'm thinking maybe I'll see something around $250,000 but there were only two places under $300,000 in that window. We are talking the opportunity for a working couple to start getting their own house as being so far out there that it is unreal. Only those who have family support, who already own property, are going to be property owners in the future. We are talking about a divided society. If you are talking about poverty, the cost of housing is a major driver. There are 90,000 people in NSW on a waiting list. There is over 150,000 low income people paying 35%-40% or more of their income just for private rental where they have no rights.

If we are to move to a fairer Australia, and a national housing policy that addresses a huge range of issues - you could talk for a day and not deal with all the changes we need - then we need political parties to commit to a National housing Strategy, or a commitment to see all Australians housed in affordable accommodation - just as happened after World War II.

I'm a power station baby. My father worked in the power stations. In 1954-55 he got a job in Wollongong, then we moved to Lithgow, then we moved to the Central Coast, and everywhere we went we lived in public housing, because there was a commitment to house people. Governments at the federal and state level had that commitment, and there were affordable houses for people.
Can I finish up on this - our organisations ACOSS and NCOSS advocate more spending - houses and services are expensive -and politicians and journalists say, 'where is the money coming from'?

The answer, my friends is really simple. If we can get through the distortions and the lies of the media and the wealthy in this community, the reality is that this country is a low-tax country. We pay low taxes, and we get fairly poor services as a result. I desperately tried to find the source for this point, but I do know it is true - last year there was a survey done and Australians said that if there was a guarantee that their taxes would be spent on housing, health and education, then we would be happy to pay more. And I believe that position is a genuine reflection of the Australian people's way of thinking about things. If there is a genuine commitment and people feel an assurance that the money is going to be spent on the sorts of things they value - health, housing and education - then Australian are happy to pay the taxes. The idea that they are offering a tax cut, so we have to offer a tax cut - there is only one result from a tax cut auction and that is a services cut regime once the election is over.

Income from all of us, spent in the interest of all of us, is the solution and indeed, I would argue, the only way to look for a fairer Australia.

These are the challenges I put up. Let's look for a fairer Australia for those members of our community who are at a point in their life cycle where they need government income support - whether it be illness, disability or age, or whether it is because there are just not enough jobs to go around. At the moment, despite 6% percent unemployment, there are still six unemployed people for every job vacancy.

Second, let's look at trying to see a genuine commitment to affordable housing for all Australians.

Finally, let's look for a tax regime that actually funds a fairer Australia.

Thank you.