Poverty impacts too many children

In April 2022, Victorian Council of Social Service estimated that about 15 per cent, or at least 7800 Shepparton residents, were living in poverty.

The actual number is likely to be higher. Anyone surviving solely on a working age payment distributed through the social security system, including the Single Parent Payment, Youth Allowances and JobSeeker, is living in poverty.

In Shepparton, that was 5046 people at the end of June. Anti-Poverty Week analysts estimate more than 3000 dependent children also live in these households.

Discussions about poverty often get lost in competing definitions and arguments about numbers that obscure personal impacts and shared community costs.

Make no mistake, the impacts of poverty are real and cause considerable and often long-term harm to individuals and communities.

Being poor involves more than just belt-tightening; it results in choosing whether to eat or buy medicine, pay rent or stay warm.

In addition, poverty impacts particular groups more than others, including new arrivals, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, people with a disability, young people and those living with mental illness.

In rural areas, poverty can be masked by living away from town centres, having assets but no cash, and not being able to participate in community life.

While living in poverty is usually measured on the basis of income, the causes are much broader than financial need.

Poverty includes the lack of opportunity to fully engage in society — access to employment, housing, food, education, health care and a range of other determinants of wellbeing.

Poverty usually occurs when multiple barriers exist together, such as insecure housing, a debilitating health condition and loss of employment.

For people experiencing poverty, the intersection of these issues accumulates to block the path forward; without money to eat properly, health and wellbeing deteriorate; the broken-down car prevents attending work to earn money to repair the car.

Painting those in poverty as the architects of their own misfortune ignores the systemic changes required to address underlying issues.

Stubborn refusal to raise benefit payment levels, punishments for not following rules that include suspending or cancelling payments, and the continual monitoring of benefit recipients, undermines the avenues out of poverty and provides no strategies to address current circumstances, let alone sustained improvement.

Better systematic support must include making benefit payments adequate. We also need to ensure access to employment, affordable health care, education and public transport as well as inclusion for all in community life.

These changes would not only provide pathways out of poverty for individuals, they would strengthen the communities in which those people live.

Such interventions would avoid the stigma, instability of housing and food, health impacts and isolation experienced by those in poverty and provide a better future, especially for children.

We are fortunate to live in an incredibly generous community. Even as the pandemic delivered financial stress to otherwise comfortable households, we continued individually and collectively to share whenever practical to relieve hardship and distress.

Regardless of the generosity exhibited here in Shepparton and elsewhere around the country, one in six children under 15 live in poverty.

That is more than 750,000 Australian children.

While a food parcel or donation can assist in the short-term, systemic action is needed that recognises adequate support as a human right.

The futures of our children are shaped in no small part by the adequacy of what they receive now.

If we fail to bring 3000 children in Shepparton out of poverty, we resign many to inter-generational disadvantage and all of its associated costs.

David Tennant, Anti-Poverty Week Victoria co-chair, and Professor Lisa Bourke