Australia is a rich country. In fact, Australia is the wealthiest country in the world according to median wealth per adult. Yet Australia still suffers from major poverty and inequality which affects quality of life and the ability of millions of Australians to feed themselves and their families.
Foodbank, a food relief organisation, just published its 2019 Hunger Report. Compared to its 2018 report the number of people experiencing food insecurity has risen from four million to five million. Food insecurity has been identified as a major cause of mental health problems and social exclusion.
In 2018 the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) in partnership with the University of New South Wales published two reports, one on poverty and another on inequality. The reports found some major disparities between income brackets of those in the highest 20 per cent and those in the lowest 20 per cent. For example, those in the higher bracket have five times more disposable income than those in the lower bracket and 100 times more wealth.
The majority of the lowest 20 per cent generally rely on a Centrelink payment like Newstart which many have criticised as being inadequate. The ACOSS poverty report states that most income support payments are below the poverty line which is roughly $430 per week in Australia.
As Australians we like to think that we are egalitarian, however it seems that we have become more apathetic towards the poor. How else can we explain the three million people living under the poverty line, including 740,000 children, when we have had decades of economic growth?
Adam Smith in his text The Wealth of Nations wrote 'no society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable'. Whatever your take on Smith, and there are many, this is undoubtedly true. Poverty and inequality lead to non-participation in work and inhibit social mobility, which has a negative effect on economic growth. The concentration of economic power is bad for democracy. It also leads to community division, as we have seen in many parts of the world, including Australia.
Some writers have contended that Smith was critical of poverty even though he accepted the inevitability of economic inequality. Dennis Rasmussen argues that Smith was worried about extreme economic inequality because it eventually leads to people sympathising more fully with the rich than the poor, and that such a distortion undermines