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Keywords: Poverty

  • AUSTRALIA

    Super concessions rob the poor to pay the rich

    • Lin Hatfield Dodds
    • 04 October 2011
    11 Comments

    A third of taxpayer-funded superannuation concessions — around $10 billion a year — are directed to the top 5 per cent of income earners. People living on or below the poverty line get no such support. This week's Tax Forum must ask: Are we proud of how we redistribute our national wealth?

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  • RELIGION

    Simple answers to economic blues

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 22 September 2011
    13 Comments

    The weak August retail sales have disturbed market watchers. The more ideologically inclined have blamed lefties who look down on shopping and consuming. Throughout history simplicity, thrift and voluntary poverty have been valued highly by many philosophies and religions.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Revisiting South Africa

    • Duncan Maclaren
    • 31 August 2011
    2 Comments

    My last visit to South Africa was in 1989 when apartheid was in its death throes. The only difference between then and now in the gap between the poor (mostly black and so-called coloureds) and rich is that some blacks have become the 'nouveaux riches' of the new South Africa.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    The virtuous circle of Gillard's climate tax

    • Lin Hatfield Dodds
    • 11 July 2011
    22 Comments

    The Government has crafted a historic package of reforms: driving long-run reductions in carbon pollution, simplifying personal tax and making it fairer, and reducing poverty traps and barriers to work. It's exactly the kind of smart and gutsy approach we want to see from this Government. 

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Remember Sudan

    • Jack De Groot
    • 04 February 2011
    5 Comments

    Sudan's fate may appear sealed, and with tensions erupting in neighbouring Egypt it is easy to turn our gaze away. But with poverty and prosperity hanging precariously in the balance, there could not be a worse time to forget Sudan.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A plan to overcome poverty

    • Frank Quinlan
    • 11 November 2010
    9 Comments

    Currently, we have national plans for such things as defence, conservation and management of sharks, national broadband, combating pollution of the sea, and recovery of the south-eastern red-tailed black cockatoo. It's time we had a national plan to overcome poverty.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The problem with prosperous Australia

    • John Falzon
    • 18 October 2010
    5 Comments

    There's something disquieting about quietness imposed from above in the heart of a democracy. Anti-Poverty Week is a good time to reflect on how, as a nation, can hear the revolutionary stories of the oppressed and abandoned in our midst.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The boy who thought he was Jesus

    • Morag Fraser
    • 17 September 2010
    3 Comments

    Part memoir, part travelogue, and part apologia, Exposure is also the diary of a young man suffering from a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder which manifests in excruciating symptoms. More interesting, and more agonising, is his driven response to poverty and to suffering when he encounters it.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    World Cup bid looks to Australia's self-serving aid program

    • Evan Ellis
    • 05 July 2010
    14 Comments

    We assume aid is 'helping people'. But the 2006 White Paper on Australian Aid specified its purpose to help countries 'reduce poverty and achieve sustainable development, in line with Australia’s national interest'. We'd be mortified if a church agency came out with such a self-serving clause.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Anti poverty protesters miss the language of justice

    • Ben Coleridge
    • 29 June 2010
    16 Comments

    The latest G8 meeting sparked new protests at the failure of rich countries to honour their promises to increase aid. The protest pointed not only to the failures of the G8 governments, but also to the limitations of the mantras 'make poverty history' and 'an end to poverty'.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Beating poverty is up to the Government

    • Frank Quinlan
    • 07 May 2010
    1 Comment

    'Poverty alleviation is a national goal that should be financed by the national government,' argues the Henry report. This sentence cuts through years of evasion and obfuscation. Poverty is back on the agenda, and it's the Federal Government's responsibility.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Making poverty personal

    • Simon Moyle
    • 05 May 2010
    7 Comments

    Last week the world was shocked by CCTV footage of people walking past a homeless man as he died of stab wounds on a New York pavement. People on the streets know violence, but cold indifference hurts more than targeted physical attack.

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