Waiting list for the good life
Government action to reduce poverty will make Tasmanians richer — financially and in other ways, explains Kym Goodes
POVERTY is not inevitable. It exists in Tasmania today only because its lack of visibility and an entrenched lack of political will.
For many Tasmanians, poverty is out of sight and very far away. And in our state with its growing economy and the warm sense of optimism and pride in the air it’s easy to forget that not everyone is sharing in the current bounty, modest though it may be.
Poverty is not in their neighbourhood, so they have little sense of what it means. And would they even recognise it if it did move in? Poverty is not making headline news in the same way as hospital waiting lists, ambulance ramping or people waiting in their cars in traffic.
Yes, there’s the occasional glimpse: images of people without a place to call home forced to sleep rough, our charities appealing for more funding to provide food for families who are hungry.
But day-to-day, poverty is not on most people’s radar, not discussed at the soccer match sideline or mulled over at the family BBQ, so it’s not on the political agenda either.
Instead we are focused on the things we know matter to us directly: health, education, transport, power costs and the price of petrol and food.
We are busy living our good life — and relying on our government to set priorities and make choices to ensure we, our families and friends continue to enjoy that good life.
Meanwhile, more than 120,000 Tasmanians are on a waiting list that we don’t read about in the headlines: 120,000 Tasmanians who live below the poverty line are on a waiting list to live a good life.
And it’s not just adults. Nearly one in six, 15.8 per cent, of Tasmania’s children are waiting for the opportunity to access a good life.
These Tasmanians are also on the waiting list for social housing.
They are also on the waiting list for elective surgery.
But first and foremost, they are on the waiting list for a life that is more than just getting by, a life that is good.
Entrenched poverty, handed down through generations, is very personal. Days lived in poverty are long and tough for our fellow Tasmanians.
Poverty puts them on a waiting list for less pain, on a waiting list to stop the relentless worrying that comes from not knowing what they will feed their families tomorrow and from having no control over what happens in their lives and lives of their children. And this impacts the lives of all Tasmanians.
Tasmanians have a crisis in their health system that affects us all because we have failed over successive governments of every stripe to address many of the structural causes — with poverty chief among them.
The cycle of poverty is vicious and its impact hard felt.
If you cannot afford a healthy lifestyle, good food, a comfortable, well heated house to shelter you during a Tasmanian winter, you will struggle to access education and training to assist you to get a job and gain the skills that lead to economic independence. Your health will also suffer. And not just your own health, but the health of the system that supports it.
Tasmania is attempting to manage these crises, in health, in housing, in child safety, but we are not directly attempting to address the structural causes.
By failing to do this we choose to consign the 120,000plus Tasmanians (23.6 per cent, nearly a quarter, of our island’s population) to staying on the waiting list, where the relentlessness of poverty grinds people down and disadvantage is perpetuated for generations.
By any measure — emotional, political, financial — Tasmania and Tasmanians cannot continue to endure that.
The realisation that poverty can be in your own community should be enough to galvanise us into action. Poverty is not an intractable mystery.
It is solvable with budget decision-making that ensures good policy. But this solution requires all tiers of government to make new choices, and our community compelling them to do so.
There is a degree of enlightened self-interest needed to bring about this change, along with the selflessness we see demonstrated by Tasmanians every day in their care and concern for people in need.
Once Tasmanians and their government representatives realise that the elimination of poverty benefits not just those most in need, but the entire community and the state’s finances, the political pressure for change should be irresistible.
What stands in the way is the short-term view driven by the electoral cycle. This view must be reset so priorities are shifted and we can mobilise a whole-of-government attack on entrenched poverty that will result in better lives for us all.
Every tier of government and every government department has a role to play in framing anti-poverty policy and budgets in fields as diverse as employment, health, education, transport, justice, economic growth, the arts, sport, and infrastructure. Every one of these sectors can make a difference.
And those outside government who traditionally influence those policy settings, often only for their own ends, must join them.
Business will be a beneficiary if we attack the structural causes of poverty.
When poverty’s hold is weakened, Tasmania will have a better educated, more highly trained and healthy
workforce; there will be more spending power in the community, there will be more people paying taxes and more revenue for government.
Importantly, numbers on Tasmania’s most shameful waiting list will dwindle. The 120,000 Tasmanians living with us on this island will be freed from the burdens of inequality and disadvantage to have the same opportunity as you to enjoy a good life on our beautiful island home.
* The benchmark for the adequacy of household incomes is set by comparing them with middle or median incomes, and calculating how many people fall below a benchmark set at 50 per cent or 60 per cent of the median. We have used 60 per cent which is the appropriate level for wealthy countries. This approach means the poverty lines rise or fall in accordance with changes in median income (including wages and any government benefits). That is, the poverty lines aim to measure living standards relative to those enjoyed by “middle Australia”.