During this year's anti-poverty week the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin said: 'Reducing poverty is a major challenge and requires all governments, non-government agencies, business and the community to work together to address it.'
There can be no doubt that poverty in Australia is a substantial problem and that it is increasing, despite our economic prosperity. Using quite a stringent standard of assessment, a study commissioned by ACOSS and conducted by the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of NSW in estimated that:
... the number of Australians living in poverty is increasing. Approximately 2.2 million people, or 11.1 per cent of Australians lived in poverty in 2006 — the latest date for which statistics are available — compared with 9.9 per cent in 2004 and 7.6 per cent in 1994.
In 2006, this test counted single adults living on less than $281 per week — a very tough existence by most community standards.
So we have a major problem that can only be overcome by relevant governments, business, and community and non-government agencies working together.
'We need a plan,' I hear you say.
The idea of developing a national plan to overcome poverty is not a new one. This year, Anti-Poverty Week in October marked eight years since the Australian Senate established the most extensive inquiry into poverty in more than 30 years.
That inquiry eventually made 95 recommendations including that 'a comprehensive anti-poverty strategy be developed at the national level' after 'not longer than a 12 month period of consultation', and that 'a statutory authority or unit reporting directly to the Prime Minister be established with responsibility for developing, implementing and monitoring a national anti-poverty strategy'.
Eight years on we are still waiting for such a plan.
Currently, we have national plans for such things as defence, conservation and management of sharks, national broadband, combating pollution of the sea by oil and other noxious and hazardous substances, continence management, recovery of the south-eastern red-tailed black cockatoo, and many more.
We have national plans to overcome problems we identify as being important. A good plan will include a thorough assessment of the problem; the identification of interventions that are most likely to impact the