Plibersek’s charity funding in Anti-Poverty Week is an insult to people in poverty
Consecutive governments have failed people in poverty and shifted the blame to escape responsibility and culpability for harm
Anti-Poverty Week, which runs 11–17 October, is off to an abysmal start. The Antipoverty Centre is calling on the media and community to prioritise the people affected by poverty and unemployment throughout the week, not politicians or charities. See our website for information about important events.
Media contact: 0489 181 230 / media at antipovertycentre.org
Included below: comments from Antipoverty Centre spokesperson Kristin O’Connell, welfare deaths and suicides, key statistics, crisis line contact information.
Social services minister Tanya Plibersek marked the first day of Anti-Poverty Week with a shameful announcement: one-off grants of $2 million will go to poverty profiteering foodbanks, $2 million to emergency relief in rural and remote areas, and another $1 million going to a helpline for people in debt.
This amounts to less than $1 per welfare recipient that will likely be spent on salaries and admin costs, not poor people. Foodbanks offer unreasonably priced, substandard goods. Emergency relief is supposed to be for people dealing with unexpected emergencies, not chronic government-induced poverty. The National Debt Helpline can do very little to help people who simply do not have enough money to live.
Anti-Poverty week should not be about presenting welfare recipients as pitiful objects. It should be a time for politicians to be scrutinised for choices that kill people through poverty, residualised public housing and violating unemployed people’s agency by forcing them into compulsory activities.
Currently, the main unemployment payment is $412 a week – 40% below the poverty line. More than 1 million people rely on unemployment payments, around 40% of whom are disabled. 20% of people on the JobSeeker payment is employed, subjected to an effective marginal tax rate of 75% for every dollar of gross income above $128 a week. Welfare recipients are not falling behind, we are held back.
People on the two main working age payments (JobSeeker and DSP) make up around a third of all suicide deaths among working age adults. People on JobSeeker represent 20% of all suicide deaths among those aged 15 to 66 years old.
167,000 people on income support aged between 22 to 64 years old died between 2012 and 2022 – 58.2% of all deaths for people in this age group. Those on JobSeeker aged 35 to 44 are 9.6 times more likely to die than their peers.
Meanwhile, the Reserve Bank of Australia continues to pursue policies intended to increase the number of unemployed people with no interest in how those people will financially or psychologically survive.
Attend our event with Central Land Council and Single Mother Families Australia
Tomorrow we’re hosting an online event that will highlight issues compounding poverty that do not get the attention they need, including the remote area allowance, navigating Services Australia debts, unlawful Centrelink payment cancellations and how people with “mutual” obligations can assert their rights.
Quotes attributable to Antipoverty Centre spokesperson and DSP recipient Kristin O’Connell
It is utterly absurd that Anti-Poverty Week the Albanese government cynically announced a paltry $4.7 million to charities for food aid and financial counselling.
The welfare system is killing people and this response exposes that our lives have no value to this government.
Don’t be fooled – this is a shameful performance by Minister Plibersek, designed to distract from the harm done by successive governments to people in poverty. People are homeless and hungry because of high rents and low Centrelink payments. People are in debt because of high energy prices and cruel Centrelink rules.
Charity is not the solution. No matter how much you throw at “frontline services” the problems will persist if they don’t address the core issue – unliveable low Centrelink payments, destruction of public homes and skyrocketing profits for supermarkets and energy companies.
It is not hyperbolic to highlight that 60% of working age people who die are welfare recipients, or discuss the clear links between suicide and poverty. Everything else is a convenient distraction for politicians and the charities who make their money from our misery.