Renters, single parents, women, students, the unemployed and people with a disability are the Australians most at risk of poverty, a new study has found.
The Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) partnered with the University of NSW to examine which groups were at risk of poverty in their lifetimes.
The study found the depth of poverty experienced by Australians on income support payments was severe.
On average, one in eight people – including one in six children – lived below the poverty line in 2019-20.
Based on 50 per cent of median incomes, the poverty line is $489 a week for a single adult and $1027 a week for a couple with two children.
The study found poverty in Australia was highly gendered and affected single-parent families, migrants from non-English speaking backgrounds and people living with a disability at above average rates.
One in five renters and more than half the people in public housing lived below the poverty line.
This compared to 10 per cent of mortgage holders and eight per cent of home owners without a mortgage.
ACOSS head Cassandra Goldie said it was incumbent on all MPs to hear concerns about poverty, and raise welfare payments during the cost of living crisis.
“We’ve got many debates going on in Australia: debates about submarines, debates about our position in the region … at the moment, we now have people who are going without food on a regular basis,” she told reporters in Canberra on Wednesday.
“We have a shameful history in Australia of taking away resources for people who needed the support the most and increasingly delivering more cash into the hands of people who have already enough.”
The welfare advocacy organisation is urging the government to lift income support payments to at least $76 a day, double rent assistance and increase supplements for single parents and people living with a disability.
Ms Goldie said the government must tackle the issue of poverty head on in the upcoming May budget.
“It is shameful that we have allowed the unemployment payments, a key way to protect people from poverty, to have got to such an extraordinarily low, inadequate rate,” she said.
“One of the things that’s coming through … is how corrosive that is to people’s mental health.
“We are hearing that over and over again, that sense of hopelessness.”
Households which relied on Youth Allowance were in the deepest poverty and their incomes were on average $390 a week below the poverty line.
For people on the JobSeeker payment, 60 per cent lived in poverty.
The welfare advocacy organisation is urging the government to lift income support payments to at least $76 a day, double rent assistance and increase supplements for single parents and people living with a disability.
On Tuesday night, Labor MP Alicia Payne and Liberal MP Bridget Archer launched the cross-party parliamentary friends of ending poverty group.
The pair intend to put a spotlight on poverty in Australia and are advocating to an increase to the jobseeker payment.
The group will provide a non-partisan forum to discuss the impact of poverty in Australia and how the parliament can address it.
Maeve Bannister and Andrew Brown
(Australian Associated Press)
