Analysis
Posted
If you just work harder you'll get ahead.
It's a
seductive concept, and essentially the view of 50 per cent of Australia
Talks respondents, who agreed with the statement: "In Australia, anyone
who works hard enough can get out of poverty."Forty per cent of respondents disagreed.
For those who haven't followed it, the ABC's Australia Talks National Survey questioned nearly 55,000 people across the community to get a nationally representative sample of what the nation thinks.
And a majority of people across the nation think "if you have a go, you'll get a go."
There's logic to this view — Australia is a developed country with solid public education and health systems that should, at least in theory, offer everyone in the community a baseline of opportunity from which talent and hard work can shine through.
But those who work on the frontlines of poverty reduction almost unanimously say the notion that hard work alone can lift someone out of poverty is just plain wrong.
"People are incredible, and people who really face lots of adversity can find a way to break through, with luck and hard work and good will," says Matthew Cox, who runs the Logan Together program, which aims to break the poverty traps in one of Australia's poorest areas.
It's hard to find someone more upbeat than Matthew. In our half hour interview he constantly returns to the positives of Logan — it's diversity, energy and opportunity — and the successes his program is already enjoying, ensuring more kids get a good start in life.
But even Matthew isn't so optimistic as to think that everyone living in poverty can haul themselves out by force of will and effort.
"Those examples, in my experience, are the exceptions to the norm," he continues.
"If you are born into a particular set of life circumstances where there are structural, economic, cultural barriers that you face then, on average at a population level, that's just not true.
"So, we can certainly see people who are the exceptions, and all those wonderful stories about people beating the odds are heart-warming because they're exceptional."I also spoke to Suzanna. For many years she ran a fairly successful small business with her husband; they owned their own house and car.
But when his personal problems led to the collapse of the business and the breakdown of their marriage, Suzanna found herself left with nothing but thousands of dollars of business debts that had been taken out in her name.
She found herself staying at her adult son's house and, when that wasn't tenable anymore, she moved between friends.
And she has this message to the 50 per cent of Australians who think getting out of poverty is just about hard work.
"It's definitely not true. You don't know what's around the corner," she tells me.
"I never thought I'd be in this situation, especially in my 50s, so it can happen to anyone.
"I did work hard all my life and, at the end, I've ended up being homeless.
Emeritus Professor Frank Stilwell from Sydney University's Department of Political Economy has just written a book on economic inequality in Australia and around the world, and he isn't shocked by the Australia Talks response.
"Frankly, if you haven't lived in a state of extreme poverty yourself, you're unlikely to understand the vicious circle characteristics that actually prevent people escaping from that trap in practice," he tells The Money.
"So, the fact that 50 per cent of people effectively blame the poor for not working hard enough to get out of poverty doesn't surprise me at all.
"But I think if the roles were reversed they might see the situation a little more sympathetically."
Strong concern about 'steady march' of wealth inequality
An apparent contradiction in the Australia Talks survey is that, while half the population thinks escaping poverty is just a matter of hard work, 81 per cent of people say wealth inequality is a problem in Australia.Perhaps, as Frank Stilwell suggests, this reflects the lived experience of more people — while relatively few Australians have experienced genuine poverty, most Australians are at least somewhat aware of just how well the economic elite are doing relative to them.
Although they may not be entirely aware just how big that wealth gap between the top and bottom has become.
"The trends in the distribution of wealth show a steady march of inequality," Professor Stilwell observes.
"The wealthiest 10 per cent of households now have over 50 per cent of the total wealth."In other words, the poorest 90 per cent have only as much as the top 10 per cent."
On a global scale, that places Australia somewhere around the middle of developed economies for equality of wealth distribution — well behind the Nordic states and Japan, but some way ahead of very unequal countries like the United States.
Perhaps reflecting this middle ranking position, while a lot of people consider inequality a problem, it only ranked 10th on the list of areas Australians regarded as problematic.
However, Frank Stilwell says Australia is somewhere near a fork in the road when it comes to wealth inequality.
"I fear that Australia is sliding towards the United States model, rather than towards the rather more egalitarian Nordic states."
Gender divide over inequality
That's a fear that seems to resonate more strongly with women than men.A much bigger proportion of women (86 per cent) than men (75 per cent) think wealth inequality is a problem in Australia.
There was an even bigger divide on the question of whether anyone could get out of poverty simply through hard work.
A majority of men (59 per cent) agreed with this proposition, many strongly agreeing. In contrast, just 42 per cent of women agreed.
Canadian political economist Susanne Soederberg, who has spent years researching inequality globally and is currently studying the role of rental housing in poverty and inequality, has a theory why.
"Largely because a good majority of the people that are living at the lower levels of socio-economic inequality are single mothers, women, that are facing this," she speculates.
"And, of course, dealing with children that will be inheriting this huge amount of wealth inequality and seeing no way out in terms of really moving beyond their current income status."
From his experience on the ground in Logan, Matthew Cox agrees that the caring roles many women are in probably make them more concerned, on average, with issues of inequality.
"Women disproportionately bear the responsibility for raising children in difficult circumstances," he observes.
"Women are much more involved in the future of their families and their kids, and therefore the country, than blokes are."
The 'if you have a go, you'll get a go' political divide
The other big divide on this issue, perhaps less surprisingly, is a political one.Nearly three-quarters of Coalition and more than two-thirds of One Nation voters agreed with the idea that anyone who works hard enough can escape poverty.
The contrast was stark with just one-third of Labor and less than a quarter of Greens voters accepting that proposition.
Perhaps more than almost any other issue, the question of inequality and attitudes towards the poor define the divide between left and right in Australian politics.
In light of these results, Scott Morrison's rhetoric as Prime Minister of "a fair go for those who have a go", as treasurer about "the taxed and the taxed-nots", and his predecessor as treasurer, Joe Hockey's "lifters and leaners" comments are all strong plays to the conservative base, likely to be well received.
They are also more likely to be well received by migrants (57-58 per cent) versus those born in Australia (48 per cent), rural (55 per cent) rather than inner-metro (43 per cent) residents, and Queenslanders (56 per cent) rather than those living in the ACT (36 per cent).
No coincidence then, given the Prime Minister's rhetoric that the Coalition saw strong swings to it in Queensland and away from it in inner-metro areas, even traditionally conservative ones. Nor that it did well with many migrant voters who have traditionally leaned towards Labor.
Australians seem to agree Newstart is too low
But, while half the country effectively thinks poor people need to work harder to get out of poverty, a strong majority also believe they're not getting enough government assistance to do so.Sixty per cent disagree with the statement that poorer Australians are getting enough help from the government, again with women more likely to disagree (65 per cent) than men (55 per cent).
Even though conservative voters are more likely to agree that poor people are getting enough help — Coalition (41 per cent), One Nation (37 per cent) — than progressive voters — Labor (8 per cent) and Greens (6 per cent) — the overwhelming majority of people do support more assistance.
Financial counsellor Elizabeth Stary, who helped Suzanna get back on her feet by arranging housing assistance and for her debts to be waived, says there is an urgent need to increase the payment.
"It's just ridiculously low. I don't know how anyone can even begin to think that living on less than $40 a day is a way to survive," she says.
"I see firsthand people everyday who are not surviving."
Earlier this year, the Victorian Financial and Consumer Rights Council, of which Elizabeth is a member, surveyed 111 of its clients who are living on Newstart.
More than three-quarters had fallen behind on at least one utility bill during the past year, while more than half were in arrears on housing payments.
More than 80 per cent of respondents had accessed either financial or food relief services, while more than two-thirds had skipped meals.
This isn't surprising considering that the survey also showed that more than 60 per cent of Newstart recipients were spending at least half their income on housing costs, while more than a fifth were spending above 70 per cent.
Other solutions to poverty
While Matthew Cox agrees there is a need to increase Newstart, he's more focused on longer-term solutions, which need not cost much money now and can ultimately save governments money in welfare payments."We've known for a long time that if you can get kids to age eight then you massively boost their life chances," he says.
"There's things to do in pregnancy, around healthy pregnancy, that first year of life after birth, incredibly important for brain development.
"The toddler years, that's when a lot of the early literacy and speech capability, and also behavioural regulation, happens.
"In the three-to-four age group we want more kids to go to early learning, and then when kids get to school we need to support kids with different needs in different ways."
Logan Together is partnering with health, education and social services providers, as well as the different ethnic communities in the area to coordinate and improve the provision of those pregnancy and early-childhood services for a wider range of people.
Mr Cox was in Canberra last week meeting with politicians, and says they are paying attention.
"There were 10 communities like Logan who are trying to work in this same way," he tells The Money.
"Every state and territory government was in the room, and the Federal Government, backing these approaches."
Ms Soederberg says her research into rental markets for low-income people — focused on the case studies of Dublin, Berlin and Vienna — shows greater investment in public housing is a must.
"The private-public partnership models have not worked at all," she says.
"Over the last several decades, Dublin has shifted its social housing into the private rental sector.
"The result of that is 50,000 people — 10 per cent of the population — on waiting lists for social housing and around 10,000 people homeless — these are registered homeless people, so there are many, many more."
Aside from the savings to welfare budgets if program's like Logan Together can prevent children growing up into poverty, Professor Frank Stilwell says the economy more broadly would benefit from some wealth redistribution.
"The growth of a capitalist economy depends upon the majority of people having growing incomes in order to buy the growing volumes of goods and services being produced, and that's not happening right now," he argues.
"Wage stagnation is a constraint on economic growth … so I think, even from a narrowly capitalist point of view, some redistribution that would increase the consumption of low income people would be in the interests of global capitalism and Australian capitalism in particular."
The Australia Talks National Survey asked 54,000 Australians about their lives and what keeps them up at night. Use our interactive tool to see the results and how their answers compare with yours — available in English, simplified Chinese, Arabic and Vietnamese.
Then, tune in at 8.30pm on November 18, as the ABC hosts a live TV event with some of Australia's best-loved celebrities exploring the key findings of the Australia Talks National Survey.
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