It's always the big lie that must be tackled first. Otherwise the other lies look like the truth.
Terra Nullius is the big lie, for example, that allows all the other lies that justify the invasion and colonisation of Australia.
Similarly, I recently read an apologist for the continued oppression of Palestinians reciting the big lie that 'there's never been a Palestine'.
The big lie that the Government's review of welfare in the Mclure interim report is predicated on is that 'welfare' (read 'government' or 'social spending') is the problem and the market is the solution.
It reminds me of Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek's observation that 'Society itself is responsible for the calamity against which it then offers itself as a remedy.'
Pope Francis also has something to say about this:
Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralised workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting.
When you've got a rich country like ours 'unable' to afford to ensure that the more than 100,000 people experiencing homelessness or the more than 200,000 people on the waiting list for social housing have a place to call home, it is not a misfortune or a mistake. It is the sound of the excluded still waiting.
When you've got more than 700,000 people unemployed and around 900,000 underemployed, on top of those who are set to lose their jobs due to company closures, the dismembering of the public service and government cuts to social spending — that is also the sound of the excluded still waiting.
Let us not forget the woeful inadequacy of the Newstart payment, at only 40 per cent of the minimum wage. Neither let us forget the single mums who were forced onto the Newstart payment at the beginning of last year, nor the working poor, for there are some who would like to squeeze them even more by reducing the minimum wage and taking away what little rights they have.
When the Government does a triple backflip and declares it is not committed to the redistribution of resources recommended by the Gonski review as a way to address the outrageous inequality that besmirches education funding in Australia — once again, you loudly hear the sound of the excluded still waiting.
The long, fruitless wait of the excluded for some of the wealth, some of the resources, some of the hope to trickle down, is one of the most audacious and sadly successful con jobs in modern history. It is not misfortune. It is not a mistake. It is certainly not, as perversely asserted by those who put the boot in, the fault of the excluded themselves. Rather, it is an attack, sometimes by omission as well as by commission, against ordinary people who are made to bear the burden of inequality.
As Francis points out:
As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world's problems or, for that matter, to any problems. Inequality is the root of social ills.
That is why there is absolutely nothing unusual about understanding this as an issue of class. And why Warren Buffett was quite correct when he said: 'There's class warfare alright, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning.'
If the Budget and subsequent Government comments are anything to go by the Government not only refuses to reduce inequality, it actually wants to take from the poor to give to the rich.
We will not help young people into jobs by making them live on fresh air and sunshine for six months of the year. We will not help them into jobs by making them go to charities. We will not help people living with a disability into jobs by reducing their income. We have moved to a position where we condemn someone for not being able to get up the stairs.
If we really want to increase employment participation, whether for young people, older unemployed people, people with a disability, single mums or any other group that is locked out of the labour market, then we will start looking honestly at problems in the labour market and set about addressing its incapacities rather than pretending that the incapacity, or unwillingness, lies with the individual.
We will build ramps rather than condemning people for not being able to get up the stairs. And we won't sanctimoniously go on about the ladder of opportunity while kicking the ladder away.
The simple truth is that behavioural approaches will not solve structural problems.
We do not have a 'welfare spending crisis'. We spend the second lowest amount amongst the industrialised nations. We are not in the throes of a fiscal crisis, but if we venture down the path of US-style austerity we will be staring down the barrel of a social crisis.
As the 1975 Henderson Report on Poverty found: 'If poverty is seen as a result of structural inequality within society, any serious attempt to eliminate poverty must seek to change those conditions which produce it.'
And as the groundbreaking 1996 Australian Catholic Bishops' Social Justice Statement argued: 'In the main, people are poor not because they are lazy or lacking in ability or because they are unlucky. They are poor because of the way society, including its economic system, is organised.'
If we, as a society, really want to address the causes of poverty and inequality, instead of, for example, extending Compulsory Income Management, which is inherently disempowering and humiliating, we would be guaranteeing income adequacy, housing security, education, health and, now here's an idea ... jobs!
Dr John Falzon is Chief Executive of the St Vincent de Paul Society National Council and is author of The Language of the Unheard.
Locked gate image from Shutterstock