The PWE (Charity’s Plimsoll line, or the heartless bastard’s chorus)
He who would not work, may he then not eat. / If at labour he would waver may he then not eat! / He who seeks to shirk, may he then not eat. / May his hunger be unbounded, appetite unsated, / lest he despise the working life and strain by him be hated. / He who would not sweat, may he then not eat, / who will not action beget — may he then not eat. / He who wills to slothful be, may he then not eat. / He who stays abed from indifference or conceit — / may such a one be empty, his gullet ne’er replete. / Mercy oft is granted in cases truly known, / but none will line the stomach of one lazy to the bone. — Barry Gittins
When I penned this bit of satirical doggerel last century I was taking the mickey out of St Paul (Thessalonians 3:10). Or, more fairly perhaps, cocking a snook at those who seized on the tough-love, tentmaking apostle’s words by drawing a line between those experiencing poverty who deserved help and those who were demonised as unworthy. Paul’s first century CE words are still sporadically cited by conservatives to target, minimise or eradicate welfare payments, especially in the United States.
Sociologist Max Weber famously connected the dots in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, with one recent translation introducing material success as a ‘sign’ of ‘being one of the elect… The accumulation of wealth was morally sanctioned in so far as it was combined with a sober, industrious career; wealth was condemned only if employed to support a life of idle luxury or self-indulgence.’
Realistically? Captains of industry often achieve that rank riding on their earthly daddy’s coattails, regardless of theological notions of ‘moral sanction’. Forget meritocracy in realpolitik; the neoliberal presentation of the affluent as masters of their fates is a furphy that ignores intergenerational wealth, a tax system designed to protect them from fiscal fluctuations and a society that expects them to get second, third and fourth chances when things go bung (Harvey Norman’s feasting at the Jobkeeper table comes to mind).
We are all beholden to our story of origin and the systemic realities we are born into. Regardless, now and historically, politicians, preachers and pundits sporadically look to reintroduce the discredited dichotomy between the ‘deserving poor and the undeserving poor’. The embodiment of that second label, historically, has been the Jobseeker (Newstart) recipient.
'Not only is it not our place to judge who is deserving or the undeserving poor, it is not in our capability — or seemingly our governments’ — to do so either.'
For better or worse, US culture and politics often exercise a tidal pull on Oz, no more weirdly perhaps than in the Pentecostal ‘prosperity gospel’ ethos that can be said to inform our national sport of punishing the poor. There is an ill-adjusted but pervasive stance afoot in Oz, alluded to in Erik Jensen's 2019 Quarterly Essay, ‘The Prosperity Gospel: How Scott Morrison Won and Bill Shorten Lost’, that God smiles on those who succeed — Jensen believes the PM’s worldview ‘fuses prosperity with virtue’.
Theologically and illogically speaking, it follows for the punishers of the poor that if you are doing it tough it must be because you are not in the Deity’s good books. (The poverty of Jesus Christ as an unemployed itinerant rabbi, a tradie who chose not to labour during his three-year ministry, gets conveniently overlooked.) However, no less an authority than Dorothy Day has declared that ‘the Gospel takes away our right, forever, to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving poor’. Sadly, we don’t bend to the light of Day here in Oz.
The miserly remittance we extend to people trapped in poverty is too minute to sustain life, or to allow people to escape poverty. The Australian Association of Social Workers pointed out that much late last year. That extends to multiple generations as the burdens of the fathers or mothers are inherited as the burdens of the sons or daughters: ‘A poverty trap is pervasive, and will often cause generational poverty as often times a cycle forms and breaking it is incredibly difficult.’
Pre-COVID-19 there was always political capital to be made from slapping the label of undeserving onto Newstart recipients, and trimming away the slim social safety net. Writing for Probono, founder and editor of WomanGoingPlaces Augustine Zycher wrote that, ‘There was a deliberate campaign to devalue and humiliate the people on Newstart as dole-bludgers who needed to be drug tested.’ Viewing the likely and eventual cutting of JobSeeker, with her particular emphasis on the systemic inequities women face, Zycher added there 'are now too many "deserving poor" to re-classify them as "undeserving poor"'. But perhaps the real drug we need to test for is the need to demonise people. Can we give up that addiction?
COVID-19 has stripped many of us of jobs, income, stability, comfort. All of us have lost the unthinking security of taking our health for granted. But the temporary increase in Jobseeker allowances has been reversed. The federal government and those who voted it in still use the deserving/undeserving framework by leaving lost jobs lost, and impacted families and individuals without sustainable support. While the unemployment rate has dropped of late, the ABC noted this was ‘because the number of people looking for work dropped significantly’.
Eureka Street’s readers doubtless know how flawed, unjust, judgmental and condescending that 19th century terminology is; ‘deserving poor’ and ‘undeserving poor’. I remain unconvinced that rank and file ’Straya recognises this; which is why attempts at satire are often taken literally.
Every morning as I walk the last stretch to work, down Melbourne’s Bourke Street from Parliament station, I see a handful of people sleeping on the cold footpaths, on benches or in shuttered doorways.
There is some provision for these rough sleepers I walk past. I see that daily, working for the Salvos at Melbourne Project 614. But we lack the power to change our society’s structure; to incline our fellows’ hearts towards kindness.
There is, self-evidently, a tipping point between independent self-reliance and being crushed by systemic inequity and disadvantage. Not only is it not our place to judge who is deserving or the undeserving poor, it is not in our capability — or seemingly our governments’ — to do so either.
The issue is not throwing stones or pretending these people do not exist. The issue at hand, mid-pandemic, is helping them preserve and then fully reclaim their lives. We have a choice to make as a society — we can recognise that needs must; that people fall on hard times, or are pushed; they end up in misery beyond their own capacity to recover unaided and unrecognised. Or we can play judge, choosing to delineate between those we believe deserve our compassion, our charity and tax dollar-based support. And those who do not. The latter choice provides a slippery slope.
Barry Gittins is a Melbourne writer.
Main image: Illustration Chris Johnston