According to a new report from the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS), the poverty rate has risen to 14.4 percent of the adult population, or about 3.3 million people, along with as many as 16.6 percent of children, who continue to “fall behind society” as average incomes fall.
Sigh.
Our 2022 Poverty in Australia Snapshot found that there are 3.3 million people (13.4%) living below the poverty line of 50% of median income, including 761,000 children (16.6%).
So, if average (ie, mean or median) incomes fall then fewer people are in poverty by this measure.
50%? FIFTY ****ING PERCENT? That means my nice comfortable lifestyle puts me in poverty.
Indeed jgh.
I’m literally taking home 1.2k a month of which a quarter goes out on the mortgage. The government is giving me free A&E healthcare, police, and common defence, library service (ugh), property rights, public footpaths and a vaccination for the ‘flu. The NOT government gives me wikipedia, this place and a parkrun tomorrow with cake because someone is doing their 100th one.
And Oxfam and Dick Spud want to lecture me that my life is schit because relative incomes or something. And avoid the question of why people with SFA want to get here in small boats. Dick and Oxfam can swivel on my finger.
Off topic, has youtube re-introduced the dislike button?
ΧΑΡΟΥΛΑ ΛΑΜΠΡΑΚΗ – Έχεις γυναίκα θησαυρό
https://youtu.be/pq3SmQ9nZyg
Interesting. They whine about the huge debts left by the Libs. But of course when the Libs were in power, they were shrieking for more, more, more to be spent on covid.
Money is being pissed away on windmills and solar panels so electricity costs more, more, more and the grid becomes more unstable. I understand the Liddell plant is to be scrapped soon. Then they’ll surely have to stop aluminium smelting.
Dear Annastacia Palaszczuk here in Queensland is doing her best to stop any new mines, so the taxes to pay for things have to come from US!!! But the one thing she really lusts after is to avoid building any more of these unGreen dams, or expensive desal plants. Recycled sewerage is the way to go. Let them drink shit.
And naturally, when ScMo ruled, he used the power he’d seized to stop some off-shore drilling in New South Wales.
But the morons idea is to print more money.
Even I!!!! could run things better. It can’t get much worse than that.
In answer to your question in the title, as an Australian I can confirm that ACOSS is renowned for being extremely fucking stupid.
Plus everything Boganboy said. I reckon I get to one up you on worst state Premier though mate. Dan Andrews banned on shore gas exploration years ago (conventional as well as fracking) but now has the temerity to demand QLD gas export contracts be torn up and some be reserved for domestic consumption.
Remember he’s also the one who signed Victoria up to China’s BRI (since repudiated by the feds).
Boganboy is looking on the bright side! He doesn’t mention that we have massive reserves of coal,gas, uranium yet have some of the most expensive electricity in the worlld. We have huge reserves of some of the dopiest polliies in the world also, so there is that.
N
I looked up the Aust Bureau of Stats to get an idea of the actual dollars they’re talking about (which the article conveniently doesn’t quote). ABS says average full time adult wage is about $1770/week, doesn’t specify mean or median though. I’m working part time (by choice) at the moment, missus not working. A light week gets me about $1600, if I put in a bit of extra effort, still nowhere near full time, maybe $2400 a week, so $1200 each. Oh no, we’re in poverty!
Oh, wait – that gets us a nice two bedroom unit in a nice part of town, night out at local for dinner once a week, one shared fairly new car, and a pretty comfortable lifestyle. Occasional splurge on a better meal or a holiday. No kids, but if I gave up smoking we could probably afford two 🙂 I don’t know what these dickheads are on about.
“ABS says average full time adult wage is about $1770/week”
What’s the definition of that? According to https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labour/earnings-and-working-conditions/income-and-work-census/latest-release the median income is $805 per week.
I think you’re doing an apples and oranges comparison.
So, if average (ie, mean or median) incomes fall then fewer people are in poverty by this measure.
How do you work that out? It depends whose incomes fall. If it’s the low paid whose incomes fall but not the higher paid, that reduces the average & they do worse out of it.
And that’s what generally happens. The people at the bottom get shafted whilst the people at the top get protected. You see any of your own administrative, managerial & professional classes getting pay cuts or thrown out of their jobs?
Like I said Matthew L, I just looked at the headline rate which was not well defined. I had a quick a quick look at your link and it is a median, yes, but says it includes everyone from 15 to over 85 (I’m not certain what that ‘over’ means) including unemployed and retired. Totally different measure, I agree. But I can’t compare apples with bananas because the original article isn’t saying which figure ACOSS is using. I’ve got nothing to compare to!
Ltw: the clue is in “wage”. You’re using the average wage (i.e. the average of every weekly wage paid) and then comparing it to your average household income. You should be comparing it to just your wage, as your wife isn’t included in the average wage statistics.
Or, if you want to compare to your average income, use the $800 figure because that includes everybody.
Over 85 just means that they don’t count people over that age in individual year cohorts because there aren’t enough of them.
ACOSS use median income defined as in my link above, across the whole population.
As an aside about Australian poverty, the real problem is rental affordability. For example, I live in the ghetto, the cheapest suburb in Western Australia to rent in. The minimum house price here, after two years of skyrocketing rent, is about $350 a week for a tiny unit with mould on the walls. That’s about 85% of the unemployment payment (including rent assistance), which is extreme rental stress by any metric. Normally the answer is “move to a cheaper area” but there isn’t one.
To be hard hearted, Matt L, if the demand for housing by people in work have driven rents to that level, don’t be unemployed in W. Australia. One hears the same complaints about London, no doubt from the same people for the same reasons. But it’s hardly an efficient use of scarce resources to keep people out of London who could productively employed there in favour of those who can’t.
BIS: did you see the bit where I said there isn’t anywhere cheaper? This is the cheapest suburb in two and a half million square kilometres. Other states are in a similar situation. “Don’t be unemployed in London” – fine, plenty of other places to go. Where exactly do you suggest unemployed Western Australians go to?