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AUSTRALIA

Young people can't live on fresh air and sunshine

  • 13 October 2014
In the same town were two men, one rich, the other poor. The rich man had flocks and herds in great abundance; the poor man had nothing but a ewe lamb, only a single little one which he had bought. He fostered it and it grew up with him and his children, eating his bread, drinking from his cup, sleeping in his arms….When a traveller came to stay, the rich man would not take anything from his own flock or herd to provide for the wayfarer who had come to him. Instead, he stole the poor man's lamb and prepared that for his guest. (2 Samuel 12:1-4) 

This is a very ancient story. But isn’t it exactly what we’re up against in our struggle to reduce poverty and inequality in the 21st century? We are still coming to grips with the Federal Budget, with its measures that would rip the guts out of what remains of a fair and egalitarian Australia. 

Like forcing young people to live on fresh air and sunshine for six months of every year, forcing them to rely on charity or to survive through crime. As if this was ever going to address the underlying structural causes of youth unemployment! 

It isn’t charity that young people should have to depend on. It’s justice they should be able to count on. And you don’t reduce youth unemployment by increasing youth incarceration. The rejection of these measures reflects the will of the vast majority of Australians.

As people of good will all over Australia mark Anti-Poverty Week 2014, I want to propose that we focus on an alternative battle to the one being waged by the government on behalf of the powerful against the disempowered. 

We have only one enemy. It is called inequality. It’s the meanness of spirit entailed in taking the little that people who are living poverty have in order, supposedly, to reduce the deficit. It’s taking the lamb instead of drawing on 'the flocks and herds in abundance'. 

You don’t build a strong economy by increasing the level of inequality. You don’t create a strong country on the backs of the already poor. There’s nothing human about humiliating people because they are outside the labour market or on its low-paid fringes. There’s nothing smart about making it unaffordable for people to see a doctor or for their kids to go to university. 

We are not in the throes of a fiscal crisis but if we embark on this treacherous path
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