U~ LU
CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY EMBARGOED UNTIL DELIVERY
SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER
CONFERENCE ON CHILD POVERTY
MELBOURNE 8 APRIL 1988
In thanking you for your invitation to address this National
Conference on Child Poverty, I want to congratulate you on
your initiative in convening the conference and t. 9 wish you
well in your deliberations.
It is inevitable that a major focus of your attention today
and tomorrow will be the new cash payments available for low
income families as a result of a campaign pledge I made
during the Federal election last year.
It is inevitable because the new Family Allo; wance Supplement
is, quite simply, the largest and the most effective assault
made by any Australian Government upon poverty among our
children. I will have some comments to make about the Family Package
shortly.
But at the outset I want to underline forcefully that the
new program is not the only weapon the Government is using
in combating child poverty.
Nor did our determination to combat poverty and to improve
living standards of Australians and especially the living
standards of the least well-off members of the community
suddenly begin last December when the first Family Package
payments were made.
From our earliest days in office, I made it clear that,
though we had some hard economic decisions to take, there
was a clear and vital purpose to that economic strategy.
That purpose, as I put it in my address to the National
Economic Summit shortly after we took office, was " the
maintenance and, through time, an improvement of..
standards of living."
That ambition was expressed as well in the Prices and
Incomes Accord between the Federal Government and the trade
union movement which recognised, the significant contribution
to living standards made by social wage increases. 0056i42
2.
We in Government as a Party, a ministry, and a Cabinethave
never lost sight of that purpose of maintaining and
through time improving living standards.
Indeed as a Government facing extraordinarily adverse
international economic conditions, I believe we have been
singularly effective in working towards that purpose.
But politics is not only about policy achievement.' It is
also about effective communication of those achievements.
As the recent defeat of the tlnsworth Government, and the
anti-Labor swings in the two South Australian Federal
by-elections made clear, we seem to have been less
successful in that important communications task.
I accept the need for better communication and it's a task
in which groups such as yours have certain responsibilities
as well.
What I do not accept is that our achievements themselves are
in question that we have failed not only in communication
but in the more basic task of structural reform and
redistribution.
Labor today is presented with a two-fold communications
task.
We must make clear the continuing necessity flor the economic
strategy we have had to follow.
Because our economic difficulties, our need to restructure,
the imperative to become a more competitive and productive
nation will not disappear overnight. Our economic strategy
is bearing fruit. Australia is turning the corner. But
there is still a long haul ahead of us.
At the same time, we must make clear the ways in which that
economic strategy is intimately tied in with, is dependent
on, and is allowing substantial progress in, our strategy
for the achievement of social justice in Australia.
Labor's economic and social justice strategies have simply
been two sides of the same coin: creating a prosperous
Australian community and distributing that prosperity
throughout the community.
For example, an integral part of the Government's economic
strategy has been the'securing of wage restraint.
This has helped make Australia a more competitive exporter
and thus has enabled us to fulfil the basic task of paying
our way in the world.
But it has also created the circumstances whereby Australia
has been able to record a job growth of more than twice the
rate of the Western industrialised world, and four times the
rate under our conservative predecessors. 0 05I64 3
over one million new jobs have been created since Labor came
to office in 1983.
It is an established fact that the best route out of poverty
and dependence is employment. So one million extra jobs
means one million Australians providing for themselves and
their families.
of particular relevance to this conference, it means'a
significant number of children who are not living in poverty
who might otherwise have done so had their family been
unemployed. Similarly, there have been important social justice
implications from Labor's taxation and welfare reforms.
By introducing the capital gains and fringe benefits taxes,
we created not only a more efficient taxation system but a
fairer one.
By eliminating welfare payments to those who did notneed
them such as through the assets test on pensions and means
testing of family allowances we have been able to target
more assistance on those welfare recipients who are in
greatest need.
As a major step in the Government's new effort to
communicate our social justice achievements and future
directions I will shortly be launching a Government report
on social justice called Towards a Fairer Australia.
It will demonstrate beyond question that the real wage
declines suffered by Australian workers have been matched by
significant improvements in the social wage, especially for
those on the lowest incomes.
In other words, and despite media claims to the contrary,
there is no simple equation between those real wage cuts and
declines in living standards of individual families.
And the new report will also demonstrate that the very real
improvements which have been made since 1983 in the quality
and quantity of services provided by Government have not
been introduced in a random fashion.
They have not been bandaids applied to social problems only
as they happen to arise.
Rather they have been part of a consistent, carefully
thought out and properly funded strategy to improve social
justice in Australia.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the measures we are taking
to wipe out the need for Australian children to live in
poverty. As you know, the new payment offers, on a means tested
basis, significant cash assistance~ to Australian families
struggling to make ends meet. 0056bt44
4.
It recognises in a tangible way that parents incur heavy
costs in raising children.
Eligible families receive a ma ximum tax-free payment of $ 22
a week for each child under 13 years old; children aged 13
to 15 receive $ 28 a week.
Currently nearly 115,000 low-income working families are
receiving the new payment still well down on ther Budget
projection of 200,000 families but currently rising with
000 new claims being received each week.
The new payment is also being received by another 400,000
families who receive a social security pension or benefit.
In all, over one million Australian children will benefit
from the Family Package.
The new payment has received favourable comment from all the
organisations sponsoring this conference.
And it was described by Bill Kelty of the ACTJ as '-a
breakthrough for working Australians which, if it had to be
won by traditional industrial means, would have taken
years to achieve.
in fact, for a family earning $ 320, a week with 3 children,
the new tax free payment of $ 66 a week is the equivalent of
a wage rise of $ 93 a week.
As Bill Kelty has also pointed out, the wages system itself
has contained significant biases in favour of the lower paid
with the full support of this Government. These include
the awarding of a $ 10 per week flat increase to all workers
last year and the incorporation of the supplementary
payments principle into the new guidelines. Both of these
favour the lowly paid relative to higher income earners.
In all, the new Family Allowance Supplement is a significant
instalment on our pledge that by 1990 no child need live in
poverty.
We have set targets to raise the level of payments under the
Family Package so that by 1990:-
children under the age of 13 receive 15 per cent'of
the married rate of pension;
children aged 13 to 15 receive 20 per cent of the
married rate.
Once attained, these benchmarks will then be maintained to
ensure the purchasing power of the Family Package is not
eroded by price rises.
But it was never intended that the new Family Package
operate in a vacuum in the elimination of the need for
children to live in poverty. Q 005645
That is why it is supported by the range of other measures
we have taken to increase the social wage and protect the
less well-off.
The Government's record on job creation, as I have already
said, promises income security for many Australians whose
children would otherwise be in poverty.
Supplemented by the doubling of child care places over the
last five years, this record means many families now have
the opportunity to work which previously was denied them.
We have alleviated poverty traps which needlessly meant
hardship for many pensioners and beneficiaries..
our reformi of education and training programs will also have
the long-term effect of reducing the incidence of poverty.
If young Australians are encouraged to complete their
education and to undertake quality job trainirfg, they will
be better equipped to lead satisfying and productive lives
in employment.
Under my Government, retention rates at secondary schools
have risen from just over one-third to more than half;
general recurrent funding for each child at school has risen
by 28 per cent in real terms and financial assistance for
poor students has been more than doubled.
The restoration of Medicare by this Government brought some
two million Australians without health cover under its
protection. This means that families which might otherwise be thrust
into poverty through catastrophic illness or accident have
the security of insurance against the cost of medical
services and access to free hospital care. It has saved the
average family $ 21 a week in private health insurance
premiums.
After unemployment, another major determinant of poverty is
the cost of housing.
That is why the Family Package extended rent assistance to
all low income families.
The shelter needs of homeless people have also received
special consideration. Funding for youth refuges, women's
refuges and shelter for homeless people has increased by 76%
in real terms since 1984, providing assistance to over
60,000 people in need.
We have also doubled real funding for public housing and
introduced the First Home Owners Scheme. Taken together,
these have helped about half a million Australian families
into public housing or into their own homes. Falling
interest rates will also ease the mortgage burden on
Australian families. 4 0 056C* 4 6
6.
On this matter, I am pleased to report progress in our
efforts to discourage State and Territory Governments from
counting Family Allowance Supplement in calculating rent of
public housing tenants.
With the introduction of the Family Allowance Supplement,
the then Commonwealth Housing Minister wrote to all State
Housing Ministers urging that only 15% of this assistance be
regarded as income for the purpose of setting rents lor
Public Housing tenants in each State.
Despite the obvious attractions for the States to increase
their rental incomes by taking a slice of the Family
Allowance, we have been able to win the co-operation of most
States in ensuring that the integrity of the Family Package
is maintained and that the real benefits of the allowance
flow through to those who need it.
I trust the new Government in New South Wales will honour
the commitment of the previous Government to do all Tt can
to ensure Family Package recipients get the maximum. Denefits
from the new scheme.
The only State to adopt a hostile. and negative attitude to
these proposals has been Queensland, which has a shabby
record in public housing stretching back over many years
though even here, we hope to win some acceptance of the
purpose of the Family Package.
As an extra measure, following Commonwealth representations
in recent weeks, several States are also considering further
reductions in rents for low income households with large
numbers of dependents.
The final outcome of these negotiations will not be known
until the Housing Ministers' Conference next month.
I hope the co-operative attitude most States have displayed
so far will be extended to that Conference so that
low-income families throughout Australia will be able to
benefit fully from the scheme.
The Family Package was intended to help low-income families
not State Government budgets.
Finally, in our efforts to combat child poverty, the
Government has established the new Child Support Scheme.
Currently, more than 70 per cent of non-custodial parents do
not pay regular maintenance for their children.
This helps explain the massive surge over recent years in
the number of sole parent families relying on the welfare
system. The Social Security system now supports more than a
quarter of a million sole parent families with 450,000
children through pensions and benefits. 0O05 0A7
in the great majority of these cases, the other parent is
capable of contributing to the upkeep of his or her child
but is not meeting the responsibility to do so.
The new Child Support Scheme, the first stage of which is
being introduced in June, will help ensure that parents who
have the capacity to pay can no longer abandon their
financial responsibility to their children.
It will establish a centralised collection agency and
distribution arrangements for maintenance payments. Under
the second stage, to be implemented within a year, the
Government will develop new arrangements to give greater
predictability and fairness to the level of child.
maintenance payments.
When fully operational the Child Support Scheme will provide
secure, regular maintenance for children in these family
circumstances. It will be a major step in combating child
poverty. Ladies and gentlemen,
Australians, with the active and constructive assistance of
groups such as the convenors of this conference, have long
felt it was the decent and compassionate thing to do to help
their fellow citizens in need.
They were right. They are still right.
But in the 1980s, we are in an era of harder times and more
difficult choices.
Decency and compassion are still powerful and valuable
forces. But today, Australians have learned that adequate
and carefully costed welfare payments are increasingly
recognised as necessary not just for those reasons but on
equally powerful grounds of national self-interest.
No society can afford, on grounds of morality or
self-interest, to ignore the claims of those of its members
who most need help. Because that help, if given in a timely
fashion, will be fully repaid in-the creation and
preservation of a more harmonious and an increasingly
productive society.
This is surely the essence of a social justice strategy in
times of fiscal restraint, because it encapsulates both what
our hearts say we must do and what our minds say we can-do.
Nowhere is this lesson more true than in the case of those
of our children who live in poverty.
It is essential to realise that a child entering school this
year will leave Year 12 on the very eve of the twenty-first
century. 005648
So the decisions we make now will be absolutely critical in
determining the kind of Australia that child inherits as he
or she enters the new century.
If we are incapable of helping that child avoid poverty now,
we will be doing an unacceptable disservice not only to that
child but to the Australia of the future. 005 64 9