24 years growth, 1 million people in poverty - Australia

So whilst both Lieberal and Labor are anathema to touching well off tax lurks and perks, at least a million of us Australians are living in poverty. The same people that the Abbott gov wants to clobber with a big stick to get us all back to work. The same people Abbott wanted to pay $7 to see a doctor (and the rest). 

How in the fuck can you have 24 straight years of growth and have such a huge poverty problem? A quarter of a century FFS. Yet if the poor raise their voice in protest the gov starts crapping on about "redistribution of wealth = bad". Fucks sake.

So much for the trickle down effect. 

But you see it's supposed to be all our fault we're in poverty. Well I didn't fuck us around at Centrelink last year for two months whilst we had nothing. I didn't set Newstart at an impossibly low level to live off causing us to live off the credit card. I wasn't the one who inflated Sydney housing prices by not releasing enough land, negative gearing and all. Yet Lieberal logic tells me it's all my fault now that we're $30,000 in debt and can't pay it......grrrrr......

With the Coalition talking of the need to control welfare spending and get more people into the workforce, the CEDA report - to be launched on Tuesday by Victorian Housing Minister Martin Foley - is calling on the government to "tear up the rule book" to deal with entrenched poverty. 

Noting that Australia was now in its 24th year of uninterrupted economic growth, committee chief executive Stephen Martin said it was a "disgrace" that so many Australians lived in poverty. 

Professor Martin said governments of all persuasions had been too reliant on "big stick" approaches to improve employment figures, noting these did not work if people did not have a stable home, adequate skills or were in a low-paying job. 

"This is not bleeding heart, left-wing ideology," Professor Martin said. "This is as much an economic issue as it is a social one." more