No he is not being racist, he is drawing attention to the one group that is always left forgotten. No special interest group to wave a flag for them. They have always existed, but while others have seen their standard of living rise there has been a fall from low paid or itinerant workers to permanent unemployment for this group. Not that anyone has ever bothered to take up their cause or to remind others that they continue to subsist in Donald Horne's once "Lucky Country".
Where I started out in life the abject poverty of some was pitiful. They lived in homes with dirt floors and bathed in the nearest creek, but being a relatively 'well off' regional area, it must have been worse elsewhere. The very poorest were those with children where the "breadwinner" was either disabled or dead and the wife left with a number of children. There was no contraception then and am not aware as to what support the government gave.
Remember a girl in my class telling us about the frog that came up the bath hole when she had her weekly bath. The house was fibro, so they would have frozen in winter and boiled in the summer, but at least her father had work, every now and then as a fencer, and probably a shearer too, during the season.
At least back then the only drug to be found was alcohol and people had hopes for their children's futures. Now it is methamphetamines and no future work prospects. Even if, on the rare occasion, a child makes it through high school and wins a scholarship to university, you'd be surprised if they took the opportunity having little self esteem and no money to fund their start away from home. Higher education costs a lot more than just the fees for the course for country kids. Perhaps there are scholarships now that will help with accommodation costs?
Last I heard, the 'weekly bath' girl married a very rich bloke, albeit in the back of beyond, somewhere in Queensland. Hope he didn't turn out to be a b'std.
