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Keywords: Welfare

  • AUSTRALIA

    The financial crisis the Government wants us to have

    • Colin Long
    • 09 February 2015
    19 Comments

    The Coalition Government falsely claims that Medicare co-payments and cuts to welfare and publicly funded institutions such as the CSIRO and the ABC are necessary to 'fix Labor's mess'. There are indeed structural problems with the economy, but essentially the plan is to strip the public sector by cutting universal access to a range of services that also includes tertiary education, to create a dominant free market that marginalises Australians on low incomes.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    What Tony Abbott owes working mothers

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 06 February 2015
    18 Comments

    The rewards of parenthood are immeasurable. But the price that women pay when they become mothers is unjust. This includes lost opportunities, gender wage gaps, and sparse superannuation savings. They really need an efficient and fair maternity leave scheme to support them as they transition from worker to working mother. Tony Abbott's 'signature' policy is now gone, and the 'replacement' families package has a big gap to fill.

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  • RELIGION

    Joe Hockey's prize orchid

    • Marcelle Mogg
    • 17 December 2014
    11 Comments

    In his Mid Year Financial Economic Outlook statements this week, Treasurer Joe Hockey construed 'The Economy' as a rare prized orchid, requiring careful nurturing. The orchid is to be admired, and the gardener more so for the skill, expertise and craft that gives rise to such a beautiful creation. The trouble with treating The Economy like a prized bloom is that we fail to recognise that the it exists to serve people. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Is there a defence vote?

    • John Warhurst
    • 02 December 2014
    4 Comments

    The wider Defence community is now ascendant in the Australian community, yet the ADF has still suffered an effective cut in pay. Independent Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie is projecting herself as the defender of defence personnel and promising to vote against all government policy until the pay offer is upgraded. But there are strong reasons to suggest defence welfare may not have much of a political impact at the next election.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Long-grassers seen as blight on Darwin's iconic foreshore

    • Mike Bowden
    • 28 November 2014
    7 Comments

    Darwin has a group of homeless people who live rough in the vicinity of the beautiful and iconic Esplanade, close to the city centre. The Vinnies SOS van has been servicing their needs for many years, but the decision has been taken to move it several kilometres away, out of the sight of the residents and tourists. This contrasts with Pope Francis' installation of showers for the homeless on the edge of the tourist mecca of St Peter's Square.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Harper Review's new world of public service for profit

    • Julie Edwards
    • 28 November 2014
    8 Comments

    Professor Ian Harper's Competition Policy Review could lead to radical change in the public services in which our governments invest over $184 billion (or 12.1 per cent of GDP) each year. Time-honoured public service values that include citizenship, fairness, justice, representation and participation, are threatened when services are seen as products that can be broken up and sold on the market. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Fix poverty by getting to know a poor person

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 16 October 2014
    19 Comments

    Ultimately people will be prepared to accept responsibility for those who are poor only if they know them as persons and not as media fodder. If we do not have some personal acquaintance with the lives of people who are disadvantaged we shall come to see them as an abstraction or a problem to be solved.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Young people can't live on fresh air and sunshine

    • John Falzon
    • 13 October 2014
    35 Comments

    During Anti-Poverty Week we're asked to take the side of the people who are made to feel like they are nothing. We join those of us who believe in working towards the kind of society where vulnerability is respectfully shared and supported rather than brutally exploited. We believe that humanity will win against humiliation. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Ricky's job search

    • Margaret McDonald
    • 19 August 2014
    5 Comments

    Ricky was intimidating at first sight. He was tall and very broad shouldered, his blonde hair wispy, and dishevelled. He begins a round that involves several agencies, none of which can help. A group that helps disabled people has given him a computer.  In the weeks we have been searching for a solution we have come to care for this young man who is so determined to learn.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Abbott's Team Australia must include jobless young Muslims

    • Michael Mullins
    • 11 August 2014
    18 Comments

    The Prime Minister's Team Australia campaign will only work with policies of social inclusion. The Budget’s harsh and divisive welfare rules will drive young Muslim unemployed into the hands Islamic radicals. Church welfare agencies have suggested a solution by way of an independent entitlements commission to ensure welfare payments are fair. 

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  • RELIGION

    Learning from the homeless

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 07 August 2014
    9 Comments

    Contrary to the message of this year's Federal Budget, there is much more to people than their ability to work. When we come to know the disadvantaged well we are often impressed as much by their resilience as by their great need and their fragility. Their worth is not defined by their economic contribution.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Time to take on the welfare sceptics

    • Catherine Magree
    • 29 July 2014
    22 Comments

    Imagine how the quality of the debate would improve if those who blamed the victims of poverty and illness for their plight were publicly labelled welfare sceptics or denialists, and forced to back up their claims. Social research academics would be thrust into the spotlight. If this issue received the scrutiny it deserves in the media there would be a sea change in attitudes to poverty, unemployment and income support over time.

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