15th March, 2004

DAVID ADAMS

As many as 3.5 million Australians are living in poverty, according to a Senate inquiry report.

The report from the Community Affairs References Committee also found that 3.6 million Australians - or 21 per cent of households - live on less than the minimum wage of $400 a week while, in what the committee found to be a worrying trend for the future, more than 700,000 children were growing up in homes where neither parent works.

The findings also challenged the assumption that joblessness alone was a reason for poverty with the committee hearing than more than a million Australians were living in poverty despite living in a household where one or more adults were employed.

The committee has recommended the development of a national strategy to tackle poverty and called for the establishment of a new body to spearhead the strategy - a move which has been dismissed by Prime Minister John Howard as unnecessary given recent changes to family payments and a boost in full-time jobs.

Meanwhile, the ACTU last week released ABS data which shows that almost 60,000 Australian’s in working families went without meals in the past year while more than half a million were unable to pay their bills on time.