" Adam Creighton has a must-read piece in The Australian:
Forty years ago last month the Henderson Poverty Inquiry put the “poverty line” in Australia, for a couple with two children, at an income of $62.70 a week, equivalent to about $28,600 a year in today’s money. By that considered evaluation of the range of goods and services deemed essential, poverty in Australia must be a thing of the past.
Today, an equivalent unemployed couple with two children enjoys $37,190 a year in direct cash social security payments from the taxpayer, excluding any other indirect federal or state government assistance, according to the Melbourne Institute. Equally, a single mother with four children receives $45,344 a year, which is, also, entirely net of income tax.
That is an astonishing number; $45,344 pa net of income tax. That is a number that needs widespread exposure. Being a single mother with four kids normally results from a series of choices – bad choices except for the perverse incentive where you get to loot the treasury and those individuals who make better choices.*
